The ribbon-cutting ceremony this past Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Brian Ulaszewski.
12:00pm | The word “emancipated” and “graduated” are ones not typically associated with lack of resources, struggle, and homelessness; yet these are the terms used when fostered youth leave their welfare programs and are released into the big world. Over 5,000 youth graduate from the foster system per year in California.
Since many foster children have pasts of neglect and abuse, they face a disproportionate rate of everything from incarceration to substance abuse to unemployment. In fact, in a hearing by the Select Committee of the California State Legislature in 2007, an overwhelming and just as disturbing statistic was uncovered: over 70% of all State Penitentiary inmates spent time in the foster system.
LINC Housing, recently awarded a $20,000 grant by CitiAwards for its special needs housing development, in conjunction with United Friends of the Children are attempting to slow these alarming trends — and their partnership with the City of Long Beach is just the beginning.
The Palace, a well-known building from the 1920s that aligns itself on Anaheim Street, went into dilapidation and was purchased by the City in 2004 via a delinquency sale. It was then sold to the Long Beach Housing Development Company and was eventually transferred to a partnership with LINC in 2010 — all this in the name of creating an apartment complex that will serve as a transitional point for emancipated youth.
Already awarded with a Long Beach Heritage award for its innovative approach to adaptive reuse, it will house 13 studio apartments for graduated Los Angeles County youth ages 18-24 in United Friends’ Pathways Transitional Program. Along with multiple services and easy access to transit, there will even be a corner retail space housing iCracked, who will offer employment positions to the residents.
However, while the ribbon-cutting ceremony this past Wednesday held a sense of celebration, there was also an air of frustration. Many of its attendees were city employees fearful of being laid off as the State-versus-Redevelopment battle rages on. This fear is not irrational, particularly following Westminster’s recent layoff of 48 city employees following the lack of redevelopment funding.
Of course, there are arguments that despite RDA success stories — Old Pasadena and San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter come to mind — that many of its funds were allocated to things which lacked benefit. In a move which Governor Jerry Brown insisted was educationally based, the funds typically given to RDA to partner with development firms and organizations to gentrify less affluent neighborhoods — some $5 billion annually allocated from portions of property taxes — will now be redirected to schools and special districts.