By Tamara Keith, Public Affairs
Posted August 25, 1999

Each year, approximately 25,000 youths get kicked out of the nation's foster care system simply because they've turned 18 years old.

Many are left curbside with little more than a bag of belongings. Most lack life skills, financial support, high school diplomas and a stable place to live. Before long, many are in trouble with the law, pregnant, homeless or on welfare.

A year-old program started in Oakland by two recent Cal alumnae gives local foster youths a helping hand.

"When these kids make a mistake, it's life altering," said Amy Lemley, a 1998 graduate of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy and executive director of First Place Fund for Youth, a non-profit organization that helps foster youth from Alameda and San Francisco counties. "They are not afforded second chances because they simply don't have the resources."

First Place, created in 1998 by Lemley and fellow Berkeley graduate student Deanne Pearn, helps emancipated foster youths, ages 17 to 21, move from custodial care to independent living. It provides the young adults with short-term financial support in the form of micro-loans and rental subsidies and the training they'll need to be financially successful once they complete the program.

Public Policy Professor Jane Mauldin spends a week each semester examining the issues of foster youth in her graduate-level class on policies aimed at adolescents. Current policies for emancipation from foster care, she said, don't provide enough support.

"The truth is that we've failed abysmally," said Mauldin, who taught both Lemley and Pearn. "The real problem is that the state's care for these people ends on their 18th birthday. Very little thought has been given to their transition into adulthood."

It is exactly this void that First Place fills, she said.

"It's more than just rent," said Pearn, First Place's program director. "It's guidance and critical thinking skills and making sure they know what all their options are."

Nineteen-year-old Kiana Rivera was accepted to First Place this past March. She used to spend her nights sleeping in cheap motel rooms. Now she shares an apartment with another former foster child and will be going to school at Merrit College this fall.

"It's really helping me out a lot," said Rivera. "You're learning how to manage your own apartment and become the independent adult that you're supposed to be."

The First Place program is based on the peer lending model, originally developed in Bangladesh. The youths are divided into small groups and go through eight weeks of economic literacy training, where they are taught everything from the way interest is calculated to how to balance a check book. When the training is complete, the group of six becomes a "loan class."

The two program participants in the greatest need of housing are paired together and can take out a loan of up to $1,400 from First Place.

The loan isn't guaranteed, however. The pair must present a repayment plan to their loan class, which decides whether to approve the loan. If they do approve it, everyone in the loan class co-signs the loan and becomes financially and legally responsible for repayment. The pair make weekly payments on the loan. Following four successful payments, another pair can take out a similar loan.

"The youth understand that they need to answer to other youth," said Lemley. "This really capitalizes on peer pressure and uses it in a positive way, where they're supporting each other and helping each other not only because of their own self interests but because of the relationships that are formed."

The money is used to pay first and last month's rent on an apartment located and negotiated by First Place. Initially, First Place heavily subsidizes the rent, asking the young adults to contribute only 30 percent of their monthly wages to the total bill. But, over the two years they are required to stay in the apartment, the subsidy is gradually reduced, and by the 22nd month, the youths are footing the whole bill. In addition, they've also paid off the loan and can use the $1,400 as a deposit on their next apartment, if they choose to move.

August 25 - 31, 1999 (Volume 28, Number 3)
Copyright 1999, The Regents of the University of California.
Produced and maintained by the Office of Public Affairs at UC Berkeley.
Comments? E-mail berkeleyan@pa.urel.berkeley.edu.