AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 The City of Austin approved a $500,000 matching grant for Foster-to-Youth Independence (FYI) voucher supportive services on Aug. 12.<\/p>\n
The vouchers themselves are funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and are given to people transitioning out of the foster care system, a population that faces a 47% risk of homelessness.<\/p>\n
Supportive services that accompany the vouchers, however, are not funded by HUD, leaving the responsibility to housing agencies and local governments to determine the funding strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be incredibly challenging for young people, who typically have no experience living independently, to be able to transition from what often are deep histories of trauma, sometimes long histories of being unhoused, to living completely independently,\u201d said Liz Schoenfeld, the CEO of Lifeworks in Austin.<\/p>\n
She said the services are not only mandated to come with the vouchers, but they are also crucial for the success of someone transitioning out of the foster care system. Schoenfeld said the matching grant could be used as a national model for other cities to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a way for a community and a city to say, \u2018Hey, we believe in this. We\u2019re going to put in what we\u2019re able to, but it\u2019s also going to open the door for other folks in the community to step forward and make comparable investments,\u2019\u201d Schoenfeld said.<\/p>\n
The services can range from employment readiness skills to counseling and case management, which can cost thousands of dollars per person each year. Austin currently has 127 active FYI vouchers.<\/p>\n
\u201cCase management alone, that\u2019s about $7,500 per year for a young person,\u201d Schoenfeld said.<\/p>\n
The onetime funding effort was spearheaded by Austin City Council member Ryan Alter. The council was already entering budget season with challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cEntering the budget, we were looking at a $50 million deficit,\u201d Alter said. \u201cThat\u2019s why having this be a matching grant was so attractive because it\u2019s not just the city fully funding the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while Austin officials celebrate the move, other regions say they are struggling to get funding for the services.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just that there are no supportive services or case management dollars tied to assisting housing vouchers,\u201d said Tara Chisholm, the assistant housing director from the Transition Resource Action Center (TRAC) in North Texas.<\/p>\n
TRAC assists with 27 vouchers across the 19 counties it serves.<\/p>\n
\u201cTRAC has a housing navigator, that that is their full-time job to assist with housing vouchers. However, TRAC has paid that individual salary out of private funding because there aren\u2019t any contracts or grants available for that position,\u201d said Chisholm.<\/p>\n
Chisholm said cities like Dallas have been a great partner to work with on foster youth homelessness, but no contracts or matching grants have been put in place specifically for FYI supportive services. She shared that they are always working on ways to increase funding, and a matching grant could be a potential solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 The City of Austin approved a $500,000 matching grant for Foster-to-Youth Independence (FYI) voucher supportive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12926,19197,132,134,133,1570,102,696,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-423663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-andres-rendon","tag-app-homelessness","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-homelessness","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\/423663","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=423663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}