Homes for Exchange Students Getting Scarcer

If trouble-free teen-agers weren’t an oxymoron, these exchange students might claim the title.

Like the 15-year-old Austrian girl with the 4.0 grade-point average who plays guitar and piano and is, her biography says, mature, stable, sociable, cooperative and conscientious. If she sounds like any trouble at all, it’s because she’s a vegetarian.

But student exchange group workers say it is becoming increasingly difficult to find families willing to take in such students in Orange County and across the nation.

“We’ve never had quite this many problems before with host family availability,” said Mary Houts, the South County hosting director for American Field Service, one of the world’s largest high school student exchange organizations. “They’re just sort of on edge because of the situation economically.”

Families must provide only “a loving heart and three meals a day,” Houts said. “But for some people, that seems to be just too much of a burden at this time.”

Next month, AFS will fly in 2,700 teen-agers from 55 countries, and homes still have not been found for some of them, said external affairs director Keith Otterberg in New York. Orange County high schools have slots for 26 students but families for only 16, he said.

“People feel they don’t have the time anymore to devote to an exchange student,” Otterberg said.

Increasingly, say those seeking homes for students, would-be host families are pressed for time, short on money and generally reticent about making the 11-month commitment. Competition between exchange groups complicates the problem. And in Orange County, the bankruptcy hasn’t helped, leaving some families in financial uncertainty or worse.

Although the teen-agers arrive with their own spending money, families must at least provide meals for their guests.

Keo King, host family coordinator for Youth for Understanding International Exchange, said her group also is having trouble placing students, particularly in Orange County.

“Generally, I’ve been here for 12 years and we’ve never had a year that’s so difficult,” she said.

Last fall, when trying to find Orange County homes for exchange students from the new countries of the former Soviet Union, King said, her organization found no takers.

“As it turned out, we placed nobody down there. . . . It’s just that tough,” she said. “That’s an area where we used to be able to place 60 students. And I’m not talking about the distant past, I’m talking about seven years ago.”

Exchange group workers say some families simply do not have the resources, financial or emotional, to welcome a teen-ager into their homes.

“A lot of people feel they’re stretched so thin, they don’t have time for their own kids, and they feel it would be a disservice to bring another kid in,” King said. This can be a blow for a young person an ocean away.

“It’s devastating to these kids to think up until Aug. 15 that you’re going to come to America and have a family and to be told on the 16th that we couldn’t find you a family and you can’t come,” King said.

Exchange groups have varying ways of responding to the problem. AFS, for example, has some “first families” where some students can stay up to three months while the organization looks for long-term host families.

For some students, no families are available yet, Otterberg said Friday, and the students are supposed to begin arriving Aug. 8. But he and other exchange group workers say they are still confident they will find homes for all the teens.

Placing students is not always such a struggle.

David Dixon, a language teacher at Thurston Middle School in Laguna Beach who independently has arranged for 20 students to come to that city, said he has more willing host families than students.

“We already have people committed for next year, so we’re in great shape,” he said.

Overall, however, exchange groups say their resources are thinning. Even some eager students with “open to any placement” marked on their application are left wanting.

One 17-year-old boy on the Orange County AFS list is waiting in Italy. His biography describes him as easygoing, respectful and curious. Wind surfing and sailing are his passions.

“He’d love to be placed by the water,” Houts said. “But we don’t know if we can find a family for him.”

Those who work for student exchange organizations that do not pay host families, such as the American Field Service and Youth for Understanding, say they are struggling to compete with organizations that do.

“I have phone calls at least weekly where somebody will call up and say, ‘I want to get a kid. . . . I just need some money real quick,’ ” said Cindy Fischer, an AFS volunteer in Irvine.

When Fischer cites loftier reasons for inviting a youngster into the home--”international good will,” for example--the line goes dead.

King has had similar responses from prospective host families when they learn they will not be paid.

“Sometimes they say, ‘Thank you very much,’ and hang up,” King said. “And sometimes they just hang up.”

Exchange group workers say most nonprofit organizations that place high school students do not pay host families but that some English language schools do. And it is not unusual for college students from other countries to pay local families for rooms.

For example, students placed through Rancho Santiago College’s International Student Program office in Santa Ana generally pay $350 per month, not including meals, to families that take them in, said program coordinator Donna Tolley.

“They certainly aren’t making anything off our students,” Tolley said. “It’s more of a token type thing.”

AFS workers admit their organization has considered the possibility of paying host families.

“We do get quite a few families asking if we pay,” said Kyle Casey, AFS program service coordinator in Los Angeles. “I don’t think it would help our program, but with the competition, you never know.”

Some who work as volunteers placing students balk at the prospect of paying families for what Houts said should be “a labor of love.”

But Tolley said she thinks it is time for organizations that do not pay host families to reconsider.

“In these times when people sometimes are working with pretty close budgets, it helps a little bit,” she said. “Perhaps it’s time to take a new look at that in terms of real economics.”