Building for Troubled Youths Is Dedicated

Local government and community leaders gathered in North Hills on Friday morning to dedicate an apartment complex refurbished for troubled young adults.

The building is operated by Penny Lane, which offers housing, classes and counseling for young people with emotional problems.

“I love it,” said Gina Sands, 20, describing the two-bedroom apartment she now shares with her year-old daughter. “If it wasn’t for Penny Lane, I wouldn’t have a place to go. I’d be homeless.”

Sands’ parents abandoned her as a child and she has been in foster care since she was 15 years old, she said. Recently she finished a dental school program and is now working as an unpaid intern in a dental office.

It cost about $320,000 in federal funds to buy and refurbish the building.

“This was a pigpen before--unlivable,” said Ingrid A. Hines of Penny Lane. Before it was turned into a multicolored complex, the building on Gresham Street had rooms with boarded-up windows and was surrounded by drug dealers, she said.

It’s the second complex opened by Penny Lane for young people who have been abused or abandoned by their parents. One of the largest private social-service organizations contracted with Los Angeles County, Penny Lane administers a main residential home, a school, a clinic, a foster-care agency, administrative offices and nine satellite group homes east of Sepulveda Boulevard.

Twenty young men and women live in the two buildings, and there is a waiting list of eight.

The newly furnished apartments are for young people who grew up in foster care and are left with no home when they turn 18. At that age, the state can wash its hands of the youths--a process called “streeting the kid,” Hines said.

Renters must be 18 to 24 years old, work or go to school at least part-time, and obey several rules. No alcohol or drugs are allowed and a nighttime curfew is enforced. A Penny Lane case manager also lives with the youths in the building.

Most renters pay about $200 a month, money that is later returned to them to use for their next apartment, Hines said.