Page 8 - Sonoma County Gazette 6-20
P. 8

IMPROVE your Community. REPORT an issue!
REPORT Litter/Roadside Debris BEFORE you report Vegetation Overgrowth so clean-up crews come BEFORE mowers and brush- grinders SHRED TRASH into pieces TOO TINY to remove...please!
sonomacounty.ca.gov/Services/SoCo- Report-It/Submit-a-Service-Request/
OPINION: In the Current Crisis, Let’s Not Forget Foster Youth
I have been personally and professionally committed to serving foster kids ever since.
Today I ask myself: What if in one chance moment I had chosen to tough it out on the streets and not return home?
What if the novel coronavirus had struck then? I cringe to think where I would be today.
class, wealth, schooling, ethnicity, gender and age. Still, some sections of the population, wherein the virus can and has spread rapidly, require obvious attention.
Our homeless neighbors come readily to mind, and local responders – to the extent they can effectively manage their responses – plot how best unsheltered individuals can be isolated, tested, and treated. This is by no means easy, and so, as we round out the month of May, National Foster Care Month, let us not forget or neglect those prime candidates for homelessness, our foster youth.
But that is the real crisis facing too many of our youths now. Enforced stay- at-home orders can protect them temporarily, but as they age out of foster care with diminished prospects, we must be ready to support them when the pandemic ebbs.
Each year more than 20,000 youth age out of foster care, and according to the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, 25 percent of them – that’s one in four – will be forced to endure homelessness within four years of leaving foster care.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, whose own life testifies to the positive impact of inspired parental guidance, has deepened the federal government’s commitment to combatting homelessness among foster youth. Last year, HUD launched “Foster Youth to Independence” (FYI) to house those aging out or already homeless and the County of Sonoma is leading the charge here in the Sonoma area.
That figure alone is unacceptable. It deprives our nation’s future of productivity and a fulfilled citizenry. But in these days of national crisis in which economic opportunities vanish by the minute, we are watching the formation of a pipeline from foster care to homelessness.
A first-of-its-kind program, FYI offers housing vouchers to eligible foster kids along with the foundation on which they can build their futures. Thus sheltered, they can dream as all American adolescents can. They can pursue jobs or finish schooling.
As a former foster kid who bounced from placement to placement before finding my forever family and ultimately meaning in education and in giving back to youths facing circumstances like my own, I know first-hand how alarming this trend is.
HUD, of course, is not alone, as it coordinates with child welfare agencies to identify eligible youths. I know firsthand, not only the importance of a stable home, but also the urgency of such coordination to kick away bureaucratic roadblocks, a priority government at every level is learning to mitigate this COVID-19 crisis.
At birth I was placed in foster care and was later, at age five, adopted.
My adopted family failed me, meting out abuse and neglect. So, at age 12
I returned to foster care. This became a pattern but, fortunately, and after several placements later, I found the foster parents I would come to know as Mom and Dad.
Since its launch in 2019, HUD has awarded $4,267,203 through FYI to house and serve over 600 eligible young adults in 31 communities, across 17 states, including 59 vouchers for eligible young people in Sonoma County.
Mom and Dad gave me a healthy life on a farm in the Pacific Northwest.
I benefited from the stable family life afforded by them and their two biological children, along with a few other foster children. And though I was sometimes lured to the streets of Spokane, where I learned to fend for myself and witnessed the hopelessness of youths like me, the stability and sense of security I gained on the farm made it possible for me to see a better future.
For too long, foster youths have been cast off into the shadows of our nation’s homelessness epidemic. HUD is determined that they be cast off no longer, and especially as we continue to grapple with this pandemic.
As an adolescent, I joined Job Corps and worked my way through college.
Christopher Patterson is Regional Administrator for HUD’s Pacific Region and Secretary Ben Carson’s national lead for the department’s Foster Youth to Independence Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @PattersonHUD.
The riots have been a long time coming.
  Over the last 60 years, the police have murdered poor and working-class Americans of color without consequence. Over the same period, standards
of living have plummeted for poor and working-class Americans. Wages have stagnated while the 0.1% has grown rich from their labor. The American dream is now impossible.
Since March, 40m Americans have lost their livelihoods and health insurance. Democrats and Republicans have refused to help during a pandemic and economic depression. The people were already desperate.
Then the Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd.
The riots were preventable. The American people have tried to affect change through voting and nonviolent protest. The ruling class have ignored our needs and demands.
 Dr King told us that a riot is the language of the unheard. The ruling class can no longer ignore the voices of poor and working-class Americans. It is time for those who run our country to listen. We demand justice and far- reaching criminal justice reform. We demand an economic system that works for all Americans, not the wealthy.
If our needs and demands remain ignored, then we will continue to shout in the language of the unheard.
Tim Ulcoq, Sebastopol
 By Christopher Patterson
COVID-19 targets us all, universally, as its victims cross all boundaries of
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