Together’s new Host Homes program will pull kids out of the homeless pipeline

Here’s a breath of fresh air: The youth-serving nonprofit Together is going upstream and working on ways to prevent chronic homelessness.

Meagan Darrow, its executive director, and Gabriella Hyre, host homes director, are creating a program to house and support “unaccompanied” homeless students in Tumwater and North Thurston high schools. (In this context, “unaccompanied,” means they are on their own, without parents or guardians.) Some of these students are couch-surfing at friends’ houses; others are living in cars or outdoors. The purpose of the program is to turn these kids away from a trajectory towards chronic homelessness and towards stable, successful, satisfying lives.

There were 52 unaccompanied students in the North Thurston Public Schools last year, and 30 in the Tumwater School District. Some have been kicked out by parents, often because of gender nonconformity or LGBTQ status. Others are homeless because of abuse, neglect, abandonment or conflict.

Host homes will be provided by volunteers who pass background checks and home inspections, and who take training in a range of youth development topics.

Students who will be placed in host homes get to choose whose household they will live in — a radical departure from foster care, which requires kids to become wards of the state, subject to placements over which they have no control.

Students will qualify for Host Homes if they are from 13 to 21 years old, attend school in the North Thurston or Tumwater school districts, and are unaccompanied. Together’s program will launch in January, and it hopes to serve 40 students in its pilot year.

The focus of Host Homes is to respect and build students’ confidence to take charge of their own lives and futures. The key to the program, according to Darrow, is that “we have relationships.” Together has relationships with students through its Clubhouse program and Communities in Schools work. It also has relationships with school districts, apprenticeship programs, college financial aid, mental health providers, foundations, bankers (students in Host Homes will open bank accounts), and just about every local organization that could help young people in any way.

But Together’s commitment to Host Homes is focused on the most important relationship of all: the positive personal relationships between students and the adults they live with.

Some Host Homes will be provided by adults the students already know — a relative, or the parents of a friend. For LGBTQ students, it may be a similar household; for students of color, it may be someone of their own ethnicity or culture. Hosts will not be paid, though they may get help with groceries and extra expenses. Together staff will be available to them 24/7.

The progenitor of Host Homes is a program in Minneapolis that grew out of the LGBTQ community in response to the sad fact that 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBTQ. Together also is following in the footsteps of five other communities in Washington that have Host Home programs. A small but successful one is next door in Mason County, and Kim Rinehardt, its executive director, is a key adviser for Together.

As in several other states, legislatures have amended laws that would otherwise require host homes to be licensed as foster parents, and added a light dusting of additional regulation to address student safety and program insurance requirements.

There is growing recognition that programs like Host Homes that arise out of local communities can be far more personal, more relationship-driven, and more student-centered than foster care for many teenagers. Host homes aim higher, cost less, and achieve much higher graduation rates and college attendance. But their long-term success depends on deep and sustained community support.

The pipeline into homelessness is as big as a water main; the pipeline out of homelessness is the size of a garden hose. This chance to help shrink the water main and enlarge the garden hose should not be missed.

This story was originally published August 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.