A lack of housing options, mental-health challenges and a lack of connections and support have combined to drive an uptick in the number of foster youth facing homelessness in Louisville.
According to a new Kentucky Youth Advocates report, more than half of survey respondents experienced homelessness while waiting on an apartment or stable housing to become available.
Tatum Heath, 22, a foster-care alumni advocate with Kentucky's True Up Peer Network, explained that many young people are navigating a lifetime of trauma, which can make securing housing more difficult once they're no longer in the care of the state.
"It's hard for us to feel motivated when we haven't really ever felt that encouragement from family," Heath said. "A lot of us don't really have a mentor or a trusted adult to look up to for that motivation."
Former foster youths can wait up to six months for housing that will accept Section 8 vouchers. According to the report, slow processing of assistance payments for deposits and a lack of safe shelter options are contributing to more young people living on the street.
Foster-care alumni advocate Damareus Jackson-Martin now lives in his own apartment, but said the process wasn't easy "because that's usually what the difficulty is, they're just in fear of asking for help. So now they're struggling, more than they have to, when there's somebody who's out there willing to do the job."
Cynthia Schepers, a peer coach coordinator with Kentucky Youth Advocates, said resources are available to help navigate housing and other basic needs - but amid the pressures of adulthood, many former foster youths aren't aware of resources or don't seek them out.
"We need everybody in our community to reach out and find young adults who are disconnected from services," Schepers said, "and show them what options they have, because there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution."
The report called for the state to ensure housing options for at least one year after youths leave foster care, encourage community drop-in centers to extend hours of operation, and create a 24-hour crisis hotline for foster alumni, among other solutions.
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A coalition of advocates is using a novel approach to address the housing shortage in Missoula, helping renters become owners.
Prices and availability continue to be a problem in Montana.
Neighborworks Montana and the North Missoula Community Development Corporation are expanding the co-op concept in Missoula, notorious for its housing shortage.
Neigborworks Montana Executive Director Kaia Peterson said co-ops are successful because they hire the property management company that works for them.
"So, these are existing apartment buildings, and what we're doing is instead of an individual investor owning that building, we're helping the residents form a cooperative," said Peterson. "So, the residents are creating a business together - in the business form of a cooperative - and that cooperative buys and owns and operates the building."
Co-op ownership eliminates the possibility of an investor buying the building and increasing rent if the property value increases. The group hopes to replicate the model across Montana.
North Missoula Community Development Corporation's Executive Director Brittany Palmer said the co-op model also keeps the property in local hands and allows residents to decide, collectively, how to best use the money people are paying to live there.
"Them hiring the property management company that works for them, rather than for a landlord," said Palmer. "It goes towards also things like maintenance which they get to decide when and what maintenance and repairs are made."
The corporation owns the land underneath the buildings, so even if the co-op dissolves in the future, the corporation still decides what happens with the property. They've produced a documentary about Missoula's first co-op called Wolf Avenue Collective.
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The Utah Foundation polled municipal officials across the state to gain their insights into affordable housing. The report found many officials feel they face barriers when attempting to introduce more affordable housing into their communities - and they say those barriers often come from residents.
Shawn Teigen, president of the Utah Foundation, said anxieties people may have around affordable housing may not be accurate.
"When we think about affordable housing, we think about more density. And that comes along with perhaps more traffic. And that may not be reality, but that's what a lot of people are thinking about," Teigen said.
However, those anxieties can create restrictions for those who advocate for more diverse housing options. In the survey, 79% of respondents said municipal officials pursuing affordable housing over residents' concerns face political consequences. Teigen added some officials must choose between fighting for their beliefs in the need to make housing more affordable - and remaining in office to help their constituents with other matters.
The Foundation says its report was not designed to offer specific solutions, but to illuminate the issues Utah residents face today.
Drew Maggelet, director of housing for the Call to Action Foundation, one of the report's sponsors, said affordable housing is something everyone believes in. It's the placement, standards and implementation they may disagree on.
"There is not really a coherent or clear path forward as it concerns the best way to do this. There's a very large discrepancy between what people consider 'affordable.' There is a very large discrepancy about how to fix it," he explained.
The report polled officials in communities of at least 5,000 residents and examined populations across the state. One option being discussed is making changes to zoning policies for so-called "middle housing" - a strategy that includes allowing multifamily housing in established single-family neighborhoods.
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A new design competition is looking to find better housing for Fargo's aging population.
Like many other states, North Dakota has a growing number of people increasingly burdened by their own homes. Oftentimes, they want to stay in their communities but their properties might be too large, too expensive to maintain or too unsafe to occupy.
Janelle Moos, associate state director of advocacy for AARP North Dakota, said there are not enough options for people looking to downsize.
"A lot of housing and zoning has really promoted single family homes or very large scale apartments," Moos explained. "We've kind of lost that middle ground to say, 'There are other types of housing that exist and can coexist and what people want, right?'"
AARP is asking interested architects, designers, builders and students to submit designs for those midlevel units, including a duplex, triplex or cluster subdivision. Moos pointed out the goal is to show off the viability of age-friendly homes and hopefully come away with some plans for future development.
More than 65% of North Dakota residents named housing as the state's biggest overall need in a survey last year.
The competition closes in early October and the winner is eligible for a cash prize. Moos noted people can then hire the designer, obtain a building permit and begin construction.
"The hope is that it's not just a conversation and it's not just a hypothetical," Moos emphasized. "We want to come away with several really viable, buildable, missing middle housing plans with universal divine design elements. So, by that I mean truly age-friendly."
Judges and advisers include government officials, design experts and architects from across the state. Nationwide, one group estimates a need for more than 800,000 senior housing units by 2030.
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