By DANA TIMS/YahatsNews
Jeffrey Wagner is searching of a few good homes which, it turns out, can make all the difference whether homeless Lincoln County teenagers graduate from high school.
Wagner is the home provider coordinator for a new program in Lincoln County called Second Home. His goal right now is finding safe and secure homes for the hundreds of local teenagers who don’t have a place to live.
He is hosting an hour-long seminar Thursday, Jan. 16 at the Samaritan Center for Health Education in Newport.
The ideal outcome, he said, would be to find one or more suitable hosts to open their doors to carefully vetted teens who are voluntarily in the program and who are:
- Between ages 16 and 21, or who are 15 and pregnant;
- Who are enrolled in one of the county’s four high schools;
- Who have sworn off drugs and alcohol; and
- Who don’t have behavioral issues.
“These are kids who have had to become self-reliant at a relatively young age,” Fleming said. “They are kids who want to be successful and who enter into a home sharing situation where they must sign house expectations with their home providers.”
A second start
The Second Home program, which is overseen by Portland-based non-profit Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, has been around since 2010. During that time, the program’s focus has been on teens and home providers in Washington, Clackamas and east Multnomah counties.
The decision to expand to Lincoln County came only last February, after various indicators showed that the number of homeless teenagers was high enough to justify special attention.
“We still aren’t certain why this county has numbers that appear to be quite a bit higher than many others,” Fleming said.
But he added that lingering displacement from the Otis-area wildfire of 2020, along with skyrocketing housing costs that triggered increased family homelessness in the county, played a big part in the decision to expand to the coast.
So far, Fleming and colleague Claire Johnson have signed up six home hosts. Only four of those currently are housing students due to one for personal health reasons and another being on medical leave.
Still, Fleming said he recognizes the incredible amount of time and effort it takes for people to open their doors to a class of young people that often seem to have unwritten labels attached to them.
“There’s almost like this prejudice that comes with it, like, there must be a reason why they are homeless,” he said. “Is it drugs? Is it their behavior?”
Fleming acknowledged that he can’t necessarily change that perception.
“What I can do is explain that our youth are homeless through no fault of their own,” he said. “These are kids who generally do not have any parental influence in their lives, but they want to succeed, which is why they are in our program.”
From experience, Fleming has found that people most willing to step up and offer their home to a teenager fit into one of two categories: They either want to help due to their religious convictions, or they want to “pay forward” an act of generosity to someone in obvious need. Both groups tend to be older folks of retirement age.
“Our program can’t work without home-host providers,” he said. “We have a lot of teens who qualify for help, but finding hosts really matters a lot right now.”
A startling statistic
The number of homeless Lincoln County teens is one of the highest in the state, Woody Crobar, who heads up the Lincoln County School District’s homeless education literacy project, told YachatsNews in a recent interview. His program identified 842 youth last year who met the requisite definition. That’s fully 15 percent of the Lincoln County School District’s enrolled population.
Two thirds of Lincoln County teenagers classified as homeless are those having to “double-up” in homes occupied by friends or relatives.
Statistics gathered by Second Home to date show that having a home to live in makes a striking difference in whether any particular student heads into the future with a high school diploma in hand.
“Our research shows that if a student is experiencing homelessness, their chances of graduating from high school are, at best, 55 percent, but probably lower,” Fleming said. “But if they have a safe and stable place to live, their chances increase to 94 percent.”
In Second Home’s case, students receiving services graduate at a rate of between 90 to 95 percent across all program service areas, he said.
There are also a few other perks that can appeal to both students and hosts participating in the program.
Students, for instance, are signed up for both the Oregon Health Plan and for SNAP (food stamp) benefits, meaning their hosts don’t have to bear any of those costs. For hosts, that means the room and board they agree to provide at the outset – they are not expected to provide any parental oversight at all – can be largely offset.
And for any teen who is part of the program for at least six months, they will get all of their college tuition and fees waived if they attend a state university, college or community college in Oregon.
“What we are really trying to do is raise program awareness and outreach, especially in south county, where we don’t currently have any home-host providers,” Fleming said. “But, so far, we believe that the more we can get the word out, the more success we will have.”
The Thursday, Jan. 16 seminar begins at 3 p.m. at the Samaritan Center for Health Education, 740 S.W. Ninth St., Newport. It’s free and no registration is needed.
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
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