Homeless Youth Alliance now homeless itself after losing lease
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- There is a big problem happening around the Bay Area that many are unaware of -- kids cast off, with no choice but to leave home. Now a place that had offered them a place to hang out has had to close its doors.
The Homeless Youth Alliance is now homeless itself after losing the lease last Christmas on its drop-in center in San Francisco.
For twelve years it served kids living on the street in the Haight.
The organization is hoping this year for a Christmas miracle or one during the New Year.
No more hot showers, bathrooms or kitchen, but HYA now takes basic services to the street, offering clothing, food, medical and mental health care.
"If it wasn't for these people, it would be a lot more harder out here," homeless teen Eric Radley said.
Mary Howe is the founder and was homeless herself when she was a teenager.
"This is not the way to operate a public health service to young people who are traumatized in the year 2014. It's not acceptable," Howe said.
HYA has tried unsuccessfully 34 times to rent a space. A generous neighbor is allowing the staff to use the family's dining room as an office and the garage as storage.
"We think that their work is super important. They lost their space and we had space," the neighbor said.
"That building gave everybody that lives out here a place to just feel like they were normal again," Christina "Hummingbird" Engle said.
Last year's annual homeless count, for the first time, looked at homeless youth between the ages of 16 and 24 and found there were 914.
Bevan Dufty is the city's homeless liaison. "Somehow the notion that if we don't provide services, people will go elsewhere. I think that's a mistake, I think that's a tragically bad thing to think to do," he said.
He says it's a disservice to the city for HYA to be homeless.
Now HYA has started a capital campaign called Go Big or Stay Homeless, hoping to raise $5 million to buy a building to replace the center that was more than brick and mortar.
