Young people aging out of foster care now have a new online resource to help them into their first adult home, thanks to a New Westminster non-profit.
On Jan. 5, Aunt Leah’s Independent Lifeskills Society launched the Friendly Landlord Network, a website where Metro Vancouver landlords can sign up to rent to youth who have turned 19 and aged out of foster care.
“We’re attempting to reach out to the private sector to form partnerships so that we can find housing for these young people,” Aunt Leah’s founder Gale Stewart told the Record.
Once landlords sign up, Aunt Leah’s and other organizations that work with young people aging out of foster care will act as partners, helping to sort out issues that might arise around things like rent, friends coming over at inappropriate times or garbage not being put out.
“We would help out with that process because the young person obviously is learning to live on their own for the first time,” Stewart said.
Recent media attention, including accounts of young people committing suicide around the time they age out of government care, has shone a spotlight on the need for more support for these youth as they turn 19, according to Stewart, who started Aunt Leah’s in 1988.
“The average citizen didn’t know the kind of things that foster children have to go through,” she said. “They didn’t know that, on average, a young person that comes here has moved through nine homes. When a person finds that out, they want to do something about it.”
People are also eager to support any initiative likely to address the problem of homelessness, Stewart said.
“And if you want to help half of the homelessness problem in the Lower Mainland, just help a kid coming out of foster care and you’ll help the process,” she said.
The Friendly Landlord Network is being launched with support from the Vancouver Foundation and its Fostering Change initiative, aimed at improving policy, practice and community connections for young people transitioning from foster care to adulthood.
A longtime supporter of Aunt Leah’s, the foundation has earmarked $230,000 in grants for the New Westminster organization this year.
“In particular in the last five years they have supported the initiative around looking after the young people aging out of government care,” Stewart said of the foundation.
Aunt Leah’s Place is a registered charity that helps kids in foster care and teen moms. The non-profit operates a home in New Westminster for pregnant or parenting teen moms under 19, a home in Burnaby for new moms who are at risk of being homeless or losing their babies to the foster care system, and 15 semi-independent “satellite” residences in New West, Burnaby Coquitlam, Langley and Vancouver for youth 15 to 18 who are still in Ministry of Children and Family Development care.
See www.friendlylandlordnetwork.com for more information.
