Bridging the Gap to Adulthood

In August 1997, a month after the Margarita Mendez Apartments opened its doors to emancipated foster children, social worker Rafael Angulo knocked on one resident’s door. When there was no answer, he went inside.

There, curled up in a fetal position and sobbing, was a young woman. He went to her and asked what was wrong. It was her birthday, she said. No one remembered.

“At that moment,” Angulo says, “I realized how needy they were, how forgotten they were. Now I remember everyone’s birthday.”

The transitional housing program operates under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, providing housing and support for about 200 young adults, with 40 to 50 others on a waiting list.

The program was initiated in 1996. Each year, up to 1,000 foster children are emancipated. Most of them have a relative or friend to stay with, but some have no one.

“What happened, historically, is at 18, basically, the foster home or group home would not receive any more funding from the state,” Angulo says. “Their care was terminated, and [the young adults] were asked to leave. Many of them ended up homeless, going from relative to relative, friend to friend, until they had nowhere to go but the streets.”

Angulo, who also serves as social worker at Coteau Apartments, a transitional housing complex for single mothers in Whittier, says there are three main criteria for residency in the program.

“For the most part, they have been abandoned by family and relatives, so the risk of homelessness is much greater,” he says. “Those are the ones we take in first. Another population is single moms, and the other is our newly legal residents, foster kids from Mexico, Central America, who were abandoned here with absolutely nobody.”

Residents, who are between the ages of 18 and 20, are required to work and pay at least $100 rent, which is returned to them when they complete the 12- to 18-month program. Job search assistance, educational guidance, career counseling and a computer room are also provided. About half of the residents are enrolled in college. The program also helps those residents who need to enroll in classes to earn their high school equivalency degrees.

A life-skills workshop is conducted weekly to educate residents in the nuts and bolts of independent living. Residents also receive food vouchers, child care and bus passes as they learn to become self-sufficient. The county pays residents’ first month’s rent and security deposit on apartments for those who complete the program.