At any given time, between 1.6 and 2.8 million runaway and homeless youth are living on the streets of America. One in two of them was physically abused before leaving home, one in three was forced to perform a sexual act against their will, and this year, one in 260 will die from assault, illness or suicide.
Most homeless and runaway youth don't want any help from their families and fear law enforcement. So the youth that have fallen off America's radar depend on local organizations, with the help of the federal government, to help them transition to adulthood.
Transitional Living Programs, or TLPs, are part of a national network of homes for youth between the ages of 16-21 and living on the streets. Community-based programs, with the help of local and federal governments, maintain them. Each TLP has the same goal: to provide a safe place for young people to live and learn life skills so that they can go out on their own and become successful, well-adjusted adults.
Transitional Living Programs must be able to provide safe and stable housing for up to 18 months and have someone on staff that can teach basic life skills, including consumer education, budgeting, and housekeeping. People who live in TLPs must also be receiving some kind of education, whether it's going to high school, vocational training, or a GED program.
If a TLP meets these standards, they can get up to $200,000 dollars a year from the government, for five years before they have to reapply. Currently there are 206 TLPs in the United States being funded by the government, with roughly 3,671 homeless youth registered.
Ebony Hendricks, 18, has been living at the Sasha Bruce TLP in Anacostia since April. Since moving in, she has finished high school, is attending a Lincoln Technical Institute in the area for a culinary arts degree, and plans on going to Georgia State upon graduation. Staff at the Sasha Bruce House helped her with every step.
"I graduated from high school," Hendricks said. "Many of the students here didn't graduate from high school. They're in the GED program or they went to Job Corps. If you come here and you're not in school, they're going to help you find schooling and help you get a job."
The Sasha Bruce House is an amazing TLP. Located in an area of DC known for its high crime and poverty rates, the house seems like an anchor in a life storm for the 10 residents. Each person in the program lives in a fully furnished apartment, usually with a roommate. They're allowed to move the furniture around and decorate however they want. Each apartment also has its own kitchen, washer and dryer. Downstairs, there is a living room with comfortable couches and a television, an office, and a computer with Internet access for residential use.
While Sasha Bruce doesn't offer meals to the youths, the staff does help them apply for food stamps. They also help them get bus passes, find jobs, doctors, community service projects, and whatever else they might need. But the residents are hardly coddled; staff point the direction the young people should be going in, and let them walk the path themselves.
"A constant theme for them [the youth] is having some certainty that this is going to work out for them, and this is a safe place for them, and you know the rug isn't going to be pulled out from under them," said Sasha Bruce TLP Director Katrina Burt.
The Sasha Bruce House is helping one of their residents get ready to leave. Ashley McIlwain, 20, has been in the TLP for the past eight months. She's been living in shelters on and off since she was 17. Before moving into the Sasha Bruce House eight months ago, Ashley was staying in a 90-day teen shelter. Because her time at the shelter was about to expire and she had nowhere else to go, she was accepted to Sasha Bruce on emergency status.
In August, Ashley will begin her freshman year at a small Christian college in Florida, where she will study to be a nurse practitioner. The Sasha Bruce House helped her visit and apply to the school, and will be paying for her airfare and computer.
"Honestly this is the best program I ever heard of," said Ashley. "If you want the help and you need the help, they'll help you to no end, until it's all over with and they make sure you're successful."
TLPs seem to be doing the job no one else can and doing it well. In 2007, 86 percent of the youth that lived in a TLP were able to leave the program for places Family Youth and Services Bureau considers positive: independent living, group homes, the army, college, a safe family situation, or a mental institution (if that's what they require). Now the Youth Bureau wants to see how TLPs work long term. They are developing surveys for those that complete a TLP program to fill out every few months after they leave.
"Our data tells us where they went on the day they were discharged," said Stan Chappell, the director of research and evaluation for FYSB. "We want to know if they are sheltered, finished school, still in school, or if they dropped out, and if they had any encounters with the law. We want to know how they are doing after the program is no longer giving them a home."
Of course, TLPs don't work for everyone. Some, like the 14 percent that didn't begin to live independently in 2007, are back in homeless shelters, on the streets, or completely off the radar. Other young people can't handle the rigid structure of TLPs and leave before they've finished the program, or they're expelled for bad behavior.
"A lot of them have developed survival skills (lying, stealing, etc.) that have helped them survive in whatever their environment was," Burt said. "Those skills can be strengths, but can work against them too. We need to modify that so that it works in a positive way for them in an environment where they're safe, supported and have resources."
The modern TLP is currently celebrating its own move to adulthood by turning 20 this year. But the idea of a federal-sponsored TLP has been floating around Capitol Hill since the early 1970s.
In 1974, Congress passed the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. According to Curtis O. Porter, the Acting Associate Commissioner for the Family Youth and Services Bureau (FYSB), the branch of the Department of Health and Human Services that handles TLPs, this was the first time the government really worked to help homeless youth.
"Prior to 1974, it was quite possible for a person who was a status offender, a runaway, or a truant to be labeled "unmanageable" and to be detained in a secured environment, either at the juvenile justice level, a jail, or housed with adults," Porter said. "[The Act] created a network of safe places for people running away from home for whatever reason, whether they were abandoned, abused, or neglected. They were able to receive services on a short term basis while agencies worked out reunification with families, if that was possible, or found other alternatives."
As the Juvenile Justice Act matured, people began to realize that older youth need more than just short-term shelters. The way many of the programs were set up, a person was on their own after the short-term help expired. They had to return to the streets, often in no better condition than when they first arrived at the shelter.
When the Juvenile Justice Act was reauthorized in 1988, TLPs were included as an amendment to the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. By this point, local organizations were running TLPs by themselves for years. But with the passage of the amendment, they could now apply for federal grants, so long as they provided education, a living quarters, and vocational training. These standards make TLPs very different from homeless shelters available to American teenagers.
"Young people often times look for structure and this gives it to them," Porter said. "TLPs employ people who are very caring professionals, and for a lot of young people they really are a lifeline."
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