Yishreal Maxwell’s 18th birthday was approaching fast.
Homeless since he was 11, Maxwell entered the foster care system last March at 17. He remembers the years between, making a bed of the backseat of a 2006 Saturn Ion with his brother.
With 10 months until he “aged out” of the system, he quickly applied himself. He re-entered high school, and laid out goals of owning a car he didn’t have to sleep in and becoming a professional model.
The deck seemed stacked against him: About 40% of former foster children in Los Angeles County, without support, end up homeless.
But Maxwell seems to have beaten the odds.
“What I’ve always wanted to be known (for) is that we never complained, we never gave up,” he said.
He and a number of other young men are the inaugural class of youth aged 18 to 24 who have moved into the newly opened Timothy House at the Long Beach Rescue Mission.
The 12-bed shelter, expected to open officially on Monday, will offer drug and alcohol rehabilitation, agency referrals, counseling and other services to youths who age out of the foster care system.
It’s the latest shelter to open at the Rescue Mission; the 15-bed Apostle House opened in 2024. In June, shelter workers hope to unveil another 60-bed shelter for women and children.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday, dignitaries spoke on the importance of the shelter.
“If we can intervene in a young person’s life during the transition age, you can prevent an entire lifetime of homelessness,” said Mayor Rex Richardson.
About 1,100 youth annually “age out of the system,” but the county only has about 700 transitional housing beds.
Of those, fewer than 3% have a college degree, and less than half have gainful employment. They are more likely to enter prison and show higher rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD.
The Timothy House mirrors the Mission’s existing New Life Program, which helps the formerly homeless find work and stable housing in a year’s time.
Residents will stay at the center free of charge, getting a place to sleep, regular meals and guidance until they can find an affordable home and a stable job.
In a comfortable, homelike environment, they will be taught basic life skills — how to budget, apply for a job — while also finishing school and looking at future programs in trade education or college.
Service workers at the Mission say such a center is sorely needed.
“We want to be able to equip them with the tools to be able to survive in society,” said Justin McWilliams, who will help run the new shelter. “We don’t want you to go out here with a chain on your leg and get tugged right back into homelessness. “
McWilliams said they have already moved four young men into the new shelter. The other eight beds will fill up “immediately,” he added.
These teens are asked to lay out clear goals. With their sights set on the future, shelter workers say, their dreams might be realized under proper tutelage.
Richardson said the shelter helps in “flipping the narrative” around young men, especially those of color, who are treated as the source of the problem rather than a victim of a dysfunctional system.
“If we fix our systems, then our young people will have the opportunities to thrive in our communities,” he said.
Maxwell said his goal is to leave the shelter with a stable job with money set aside, a high school degree and a home large enough for him and his brother. “And then just be stable, be at peace,” he said.