The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded the Atlanta Housing Authority ten vouchers for former foster youth who have aged out of care and are in need of housing assistance.
It’s the first such award to a Georgia housing authority from the federal program known as the Foster Youth to Independence initiative in several years and follows a WABE and ProPublica investigation that showed how the state had fallen short in accessing the vouchers.
According to HUD’s data at the time, other states, such as Texas and Washington, had claimed several hundred vouchers to help keep foster youth housed. In Georgia, housing authorities were also eligible to claim hundreds. But the state had only received eight, all for communities in southern Georgia.
The ten new vouchers, which provide three to five years of rental assistance to young adults who’ve left foster care, are the first from the program to be available in Atlanta.
More vouchers for foster youth could follow. In the months since the WABE and ProPublica investigation was published, the state Department of Community Affairs also took a crucial step toward offering the vouchers by entering into an agreement with the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, which must refer young people for housing assistance.
DFCS said it is still actively working with five other Georgia housing authorities that could apply for the vouchers. The agency expects to launch a centralized process for referring young people early next year.
Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, a longtime state legislator who has helped craft child welfare system reforms, is among those who called on the state to do more to obtain the federal housing aid following WABE and ProPublica’s reporting. She said the state’s job is to prepare foster youth for adulthood – and a crucial component is housing.
“We cannot avoid this legal responsibility. We cannot avoid this moral responsibility. And I’m glad that this is being discussed. I’m glad we’re making progress,” she said.
WABE and ProPublica found that in the years that Georgia failed to take advantage of the voucher program, the burden for securing the housing assistance ultimately landed on DFCS.
After the Foster Youth to Independence program launched in 2019, the federal government instructed state child welfare agencies to work with housing authorities to get assistance to young people in need. But DFCS didn’t begin serious outreach to housing authorities until this year according to conversations with staff at housing authorities.
Since beginning that process, DFCS has also worked with the Atlanta Housing Authority and a nonprofit called Up3 to refer around 30 youths for federal housing vouchers in the related Family Unification Program. That housing assistance is available to both young people and families affected by the child welfare system.
Read WABE and ProPublica’s investigation into the housing policies that separate parents and children in Georgia
