New Resource for Youth Advocates: Ensuring Stability and Success for Youth Tenants in THP-Plus
Bay Area Legal Aid is pleased to announce the publication of Ensuring Stability And Success For Youth Tenants In THP Plus. Co-authored by advocates from the Youth Law Center and Britt Harwood of BayLegal’s Youth Justice team, this resource is intended to help advocates improve housing stability and ongoing access to supportive services for their clients who are former foster youth.
From the publication’s introduction:
Youth Law Center and Bay Area Legal Aid developed this tool for civil legal advocates to initiate capacity-building conversations about transition planning with THP-Plus providers and the county agencies that oversee them.
The Transitional Housing Program Plus (THP-Plus) provides affordable housing and comprehensive supportive services for former foster youth. Transition planning and securing long-term stable housing are core to the purpose of the THP-Plus program: to help former foster youth achieve self-sufficiency. Yet, THP-Plus participants report that THP-Plus agencies do not always engage participants in meaningful transition planning or proactively help them meet their goals, including seeking out and securing stable housing where they can live after completing the THP-Plus program. THP-Plus agencies are required under state regulations to provide transition planning in order to be certified by counties, but it is not clear to what extent counties oversee THP-Plus agencies’ performance of those transition planning duties.
This tool helps build shared language and knowledge around THP-Plus agencies’ transition planning duties under state regulations and state and federal housing and antidiscrimination law. It also makes recommendations for how THP-Plus agencies can establish strong working relationships with THP-Plus participants, to further support them in achieving their goals.
For more information about youth tenants’ rights in THP-Plus, please consult the Youth Law Center publication “Preventing Involuntary Exits from THP-Plus: An Advocacy Guide”.