TEXAS \u2014 More than 700 people age out of the foster care system every year in the state, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Aging out refers to when a person turns 18 and is no longer a ward of the state.<\/p>\n
Those individuals, however, face a high risk of homelessness, with the department saying that nearly half of those who age out will experience homelessness by the age of 26.<\/p>\n
One solution used to combat homelessness is the Foster to Youth Independence (FYI) voucher, created back in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cFYI vouchers are federal housing vouchers specifically for youth and young adults that are exiting the foster care system,\u201d said David Gray, the director for the City of Austin\u2019s Homeless Strategies and Operations Office. \u201cIt provides those young adults with up to three years of federally funded housing assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a catch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the federal government provides these housing supports for young people, it comes with an unfunded mandate to be coupled with supportive services,\u201d said Liz Schoenfeld, the CEO of LifeWorks \u2014 an organization that provides those services and helps connect individuals to FYI vouchers.<\/p>\n
Their funding comes in from the City of Austin and other philanthropic donations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe at LifeWorks have been incredibly fortunate over the last couple of years by being able to piece together these alternative sources of funding to provide the supportive services, it\u2019s by no means a stable and reliable means of providing that support in the long run,\u201d said Schoenfeld.<\/p>\n
Schoenfeld and other housing advocates are making it their mission to increase funding from the state. They testified before the Texas House Intergovernmental Affairs Committee on June 24 to raise the issue that more funding is needed not only in Austin but across the state.<\/p>\n
This coincides with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development \u2014 where the FYI voucher program originated from \u2014 announcing in late July that it is removing the cap on the number of FYI vouchers public housing agencies, like cities and organizations, can apply for.<\/p>\n
But if a city doesn\u2019t have the mandated services, no vouchers can be released.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the conversations we\u2019ve been having recently is with the state to ensure that every young person, regardless of geography, in the state of Texas is able to access the supportive services that would open FYI vouchers to them,\u201d said Schoenfeld.<\/p>\n
One former foster kid, Jared Irwin, says the effort is a win in his book.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re going to bring this to other youth \u2014 yes, please, and thank you,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause it changed my life, and it can change other people’s lives as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 More than 700 people age out of the foster care system every year in the state,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12926,132,134,133,1570,102,138,223,82,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-397635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-andres-rendon","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}