Almost 100 Colorado teenagers and young adults in foster care left the system last year without being adopted or returned to their families. For the first time, the state is funding a housing voucher program to make sure they don’t end up homeless.
Thanks to legislation passed last year, the state recently began offering 100 housing vouchers per year for young adults ages 18 to 25 who were in foster care at 14 or older and are homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless. The $1 million allocated annually from the state general fund is expected to subsidize rent for 100 young adults at $10,000 each per year.
A month into the program, the state Division of Child Welfare has approved 25 people for the vouchers. The Colorado Department of Human Services, which includes the child welfare division, expects that it will end up with a waitlist in the coming months.
Former foster kids are among the groups eligible for federal housing vouchers under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s family unification program, but the new state program will make a huge impact on the number of young people who can get housing assistance in Colorado, said Trevor Williams, youth services unit manager at the state human services department.
Adding 100 vouchers is “a very big deal,” he said. “If there is a homeless youth who needs one of these vouchers, we’ve got them right now.”
People who receive a voucher will also have a case manager to help them handle paperwork, job hunting, medical or mental health appointments and other life skills they might not have learned growing up in foster care. The state is projected to spend $1.4 million each year on case management.
More than one-third of former foster youth end up homeless, according to national and state data. The latest numbers from Colorado’s National Youth in Transition Database, from 2021, showed that 36% of 21-year-olds who left the system were homeless during the prior two years.
Foster kids as young as 18, and in some cases 17, can emancipate from the system to begin life on their own, often after spending years bouncing through multiple foster homes and residential centers. Colorado in recent years has increased services for aged-out youth, including passing a law in 2021 that allows young people who have emancipated to re-enter the system up until age 21.
The new voucher program will pay 70% to 100% of monthly rent for former foster youth. In most counties, young people will receive the vouchers through the Chafee Foster Care Program, which for years has paired foster kids who are about to emancipate from the system with a local case manager who helps them transition to living on their own.
“Youth leaving foster care may not have adults in their lives who can help them during this milestone,” Williams said. “They also don’t always have the tools to become independent immediately.”
Not every county in Colorado has a Chafee program, however. Young people in the far northwestern counties of Routt and Moffat, along the Interstate 70 ski corridor, and in Las Animas County in south-central Colorado will need to apply to the state human services department.
The state will distribute the vouchers among counties depending on need. Each county does not receive a set number of vouchers. Instead, the Chafee program and county officials will help young people fill out applications and complete risk assessments that will prioritize people who are already homeless and rank who is most at risk of becoming homeless.
To apply for the voucher program, email cdhs_fosteringsuccess@state.co.us.
“They are going pretty quickly,” Williams said.