Heroes of The Homeless Crisis: How Jennifer Friend of Project Hope Alliance is Helping To Support Some Of The Most Vulnerable People In Our Communities
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Movement for the kids. I think we need to start looking at all our systems and putting kids at the center. We all say that children are the future. Yet when we’re building systems, we don’t consider them at all. And then we are stuck dealing with problems and challenges that are created by failing to put kids first. So, I really do think that if we have a movement that’s for the kids where every system — healthcare, behavioral health, education, criminal justice, etc. — considers kids, it will completely transform the way our children grow up and how they contribute to society.
As a part of my series about “Heroes Of The Homeless Crisis” I had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Friend.
Jennifer Friend, J.D. is Chief Executive Officer of Project Hope Alliance (PHA), which works to end the cycle of youth homelessness using a long-term, site-based model of providing whole-person care for youth experiencing homelessness in Orange County. Under her leadership, the organization now serves more than 2,580 youth attending 43 schools, having built a nationally recognized model for ending homelessness, and achieving a high school graduation rate more than 20% above the national average for students experiencing homelessness. Friend’s personal experience as a homeless child fuels her passion for ensuring no child is limited by their parents’ economic circumstances and all things are possible for their futures.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a bit about your personal background, and how you grew up?
Like the youth we help at Project Hope Alliance, I grew up experiencing homelessness in the wealthy Orange County suburbs of Newport Mesa & Huntington Beach. I lived intermittently in a 214 sq. ft. motel room with my family of six during my junior high and high school years, so I know first-hand how isolating and challenging it is for the youth we assist. I also know that a little help can make a huge difference in these children’s lives — and like me, they can go on to graduate high-school, college and even become a lawyer! After a successful career at a top law firm, I joined the Project Hope Alliance board of directors, actively helping the organization expand and grow. My true calling has always been “for the kids” so in 2013 when we were looking for a CEO, I knew this was my time to go all in.
Is there a particular story or incident that inspired you to get involved in your work helping people who are homeless?
We have a food pantry at our offices, and within the first two years of starting at PHA, there was a mom who came in with her two kids. I was helping her get some food and supplies and I was taking her through the office, and somehow we got separated.
When I found her in the lobby, she was looking at a framed article about me and my story and I looked up at her and she was crying, so I asked if she was alright. She said, “I didn’t know that you were one of us.” I looked at her and said, “I am, and that’s how I know your kids are going to be OK.” We cried together, and I told her my story, and what I had gone through. Yes, college and law school were challenging, but I did it, and I even became a partner at my law firm! And her kids can have that chance, too. My story obviously humanizes the struggle of other youth experiencing homelessness and underscores that in the end, we all have a story, and we all have hope. It was one of the most profound moments that I had, and I just remember it sinking in…this is exactly why I am here.
Homelessness has been a problem for a long time in the United States. But it seems that it has gotten a lot worse over the past five years, particularly in the large cities, such as Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Can you explain to our readers what brought us to this place? Where did this crisis come from?
The issue of homelessness in California is significant, with our state’s homeless population increasing exponentially in recent years. According to the 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, more than half of all unsheltered people in the United States are in California.
The problem is particularly real in Orange County. Despite the great wealth of some of its residents, Orange County is an under-resourced community as far as its most vulnerable residents are concerned. From 2007 to 2016, the number of Pre-K through 12th grade students encountering homelessness in Orange County skyrocketed over 100%, and the number continues to climb. According to the OC Department of Education, Orange County has more than 29,000 identified homeless school-aged children — representing 5.8% of total school enrollment. The vast majority (90%) of homeless children are doubled or tripled-up with others due to economic hardship. They are also staying in motels and shelters and some are living in cars or in public spaces.
While there are a mix of issues that can contribute to the likelihood of homelessness, including childhood trauma/poverty, mental illness and substance use issues, the major issue in California is that housing has become too expensive and too scarce compared to the wages that are earned by many of our parents. Undereducation continues to drive generational poverty when a student experiencing homelessness is 87% more likely to drop out of high school compared to their housed peers.
According to a 2016 study by McKinsey, California needs an additional 3.5 million housing units by 2025 to deal with the current housing shortage. Even with that knowledge at hand, there are only 100,000 new homes being constructed yearly — which accounts for only 56% of demand.
That said, if a home is available, it may be unattainable for many California residents. A 2021 National Low Income Housing Coalition report found that California is the most expensive state to rent in the country. A Californian working a normal 40-hour week needs to earn $39.03 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. If that same person was making the state minimum wage ($14 per hour), they would have to work 112 hours per week to afford that same rental.
A question that many people who are not familiar with the intricacies of this problem ask is, “Why don’t homeless people just move to a city that has cheaper housing?” How do you answer this question?
It’s not as simple as that. People experiencing homeless are experiencing it for many reasons and in many forms. Yes, there are individuals sleeping in tents on the side of the road, but there are also families going from motel room to motel room, in between housing. Moving requires startup costs, like security deposits and good credit, that people earning minimum wage and experiencing homelessness likely don’t have. I also think there’s a misconception that people experiencing homelessness are unemployed. Many are in fact working multiple jobs and moving to cities with cheaper housing doesn’t necessarily mean more job opportunities once they’ve moved. In Orange County for example there are a myriad of service industry jobs that do not require a high school diploma or specialized training which is why so many families are here.
When it comes to children experiencing homelessness, they generally want to stay where they have friends and moving can be disruptive to that. Further, when a child moves to a new school, it often results in a three- to six-month loss in educational gains. The more they move the more education is lost and children need stable and consistent education — while this might not be apparent to students, we as a community now know this and need to help prevent it.
If someone passes a homeless person on the street, what is the best way to help them?
First and foremost, it’s important to remember that this is someone’s child and has inherent worth and value as a person and should be treated with dignity and respect. If we notice, most of our unsheltered neighbors walk with their eyes to the ground or avoid making eye contact. Personally, I think that is a trained response from years of looking at others who avert their eyes. Showing someone a small act of kindness — even a smile or a wave — can go a long way in positively impacting the lives of those you encounter. At Project Hope Alliance, we believe creating permanent, sustainable life change comes from trusting relationships based in dignity and respect.
As a mom, I talk with my kids about ways we can help others and demonstrate action by keeping extra umbrellas in my car to hand out when it is raining, Project Hope Alliance brochures and business cards to give to families who may need resources, and extra sunscreen and water to share in the summer months.
Can you describe to our readers how your work is making an impact battling this crisis?
Indirectly, our work benefits all residents of Orange County as our case management model acts as a preventive measure against adult homelessness. PHA’s proactive approach keeps our youth from becoming the next generation of homeless, which also has a significant beneficial impact on the local economy. Through a study done by Edwards Lifesciences, our work is shown to contribute $75,000 in savings to the community per high school graduate per year. This is a combination of $45,000 in avoided costs, as well as $35,000 in increased wages per graduate.
Overall, America would save $18.5 billion in crime costs if the high school male graduation rate increased by only 5% and cutting the number of high school dropouts in half nationally would save $7.3 billion in annual Medicare spending. So, our impact in graduating students experiencing homelessness at a graduation rate more than 20% above the national average has a significant fiscal impact on our community and nation.
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the homeless crisis, and the homeless community? Also how has it affected your ability to help people?
The COVID-19 pandemic affected the homeless community in a multitude of ways. First, it increased the hardship experienced by students and families in Orange County and across the U.S. The 22.2 million lost jobs in California in the first two months of the pandemic exacerbated the tenuous situation of many families who were already on the edge of homelessness, because some parents who lost their jobs could not afford to pay rent and subsequently became homeless.
Due to the school closures, and without access to transportation, students were not able to access the resources provided by traditional homeless services agencies. In Orange County, the Department of Education reported that 14% of the total student population in Southern California schools had no online contact with their teachers, and over 30% had only intermittent participation in online learning, especially in lower-income areas. That means these students truly lost over one-year of education, putting them even further behind their counterparts.
Like many organizations, navigating operations during the lockdown was difficult, but our team refused to be paralyzed. We went into the community, to motels, shelters and where the kids were, knowing that they needed us more than ever. I’m proud that the adversity of the pandemic didn’t build character for the team but rather revealed that the team is determined, committed, and compelled to end the cycle of homelessness, one child at a time and do whatever it takes to show up for our kids! In 2020, PHA went to kids & families living in motels in Santa Ana, Tustin, Anaheim, Stanton, and Garden Grove with resources to support parents and children struggling to bridge the “digital divide” brought about by distance learning. Partners included St. Andrews and Mariners Churches (food and volunteers), IKEA (food), Ecology Center (farm fresh produce), Bracken’s Kitchen (pre-prepared meals), Edwards Lifesciences (Chromebooks) and Mercury Insurance (Chromebooks). At these motels, we provided 130 Chromebooks and 114 hotspots so they could do schoolwork, brought 2,335 bags of groceries, 984 boxes of produce, and 124 pressure cookers. In total, just in the motels, we served 240 unduplicated families and 427 unduplicated children.
Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?
My work is extremely personal to me; I truly believe it is my life’s calling. Growing up, I was one of the faces of Orange County youth homelessness. As a technology entrepreneur, my father experienced unpredictable lapses in income. Although my mother worked as a preschool teacher, keeping a roof over our family of six proved taxing. While there were periods of financial stability, there were also times of despair. During my junior high and high school years, my three brothers, our parents and I often packed our lives into 214-square-foot motel rooms. Feelings of shame, lack of privacy, and an economically schizophrenic childhood created an environment where the basic elements of being a kid, like doing homework, were sometimes lost.
The thing that makes me most proud about our work is the singular focus of walking alongside and doing life with the kids we serve. It’s something that I would have valued so much as a kid experiencing homelessness. The relationships and partnership we provide to our students lead to amazing, life-changing results. For example, even during a difficult pandemic year, with the lack of school campus access and high rates of absenteeism across the nation, we still saw a 78% high school graduation rate among our senior high school students (compared to 64% in CA among those experiencing homelessness pre-COVID). During a difficult time for all of us, seeing these successes among our kids was a bright point for me.
Without sharing real names, can you share a story with our readers about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your work?
We work with a high school senior from Newport Harbor High School who plans to attend college and major in art next fall. While many Newport seniors have the luxury of attending college as an art (or any major) next year, if you knew her two years ago, this would be surprising. During her sophomore year, she was struggling in school. Her teacher, who believed her failing grades were related to her housing situation, referred her to us. We worked closely with her, helping her to recover her grades. By her junior year, she was passing all her classes. During this time, she also discovered a love for singing and earned a role in her school’s holiday production. Like many youth experiencing housing issues, she did not have anything nice to wear for the performance — so PHA made sure she had a new dress and shoes for her big debut. The unique partnership between PHA and Newport Harbor High School made providing support to and creating solutions for her easy.
It’s stories like this that remind us that it’s time. It’s time to show up for our kids in real time, where they are. It’s especially important for our K-12 students experiencing homelessness. To do that, we will need to step outside of our silos, and into their lives and directly onto their public-school campuses.
Can you share three things that the community and society can do to help you address the root of this crisis? Can you give some examples?
Homelessness has a detrimental impact on the academic performance, physical health, and emotional and behavioral wellbeing of children and youth. Homeless students are at a greater risk of being chronically absent, of being suspended, of being behind in school (an average two grade levels), and of failing to graduate from high school. Young people who experience homelessness are 87% more likely to drop out of high school than their housed peers. In California, high school graduation rates are 64% for homeless children, compared to 88% across all students. Failing to graduate from high school results in greater barriers to college, vocational training, career options, and financial independence. Worst of all, youth without high school diplomas are 346% more likely to experience homelessness as adults. These are the problems that Project Hope Alliance tackles.
Research shows homeless children often become homeless adults. To help end the cycle of homelessness, we need to:
First and foremost, admit that homeless children are there. So many people have such a hard time understanding that there are enough children experiencing homelessness in the state of California to fill Dodger Stadium…5 times! So just, first, seeing that they exist.
There is a quote that I love from Desmond Tutu: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” So, we need to admit that we have an issue with students experiencing homelessness, and then second, we need to start actually doing something about it.
And third, when we get upstream, we need to figure out why our kids are falling in the metaphoric river. We need to eliminate those barriers and fill in those gaps, so we don’t see chronic homelessness, like we do now, amongst adults and individuals.
If you had the power to influence legislation, which three laws would you like to see introduced that might help you in your work?
Make the definition of homelessness used in our nation’s public school system the same as the definition of homelessness used by HUD, so that our kids and families have access to the resources that they so desperately need. Right now, the two definitions contradict one another resulting in children sleeping unsheltered and resource waste and cost. Currently within a family you have children considered homeless under the national definition living with parents who are not considered homeless. If we fixed this one thing it would be transformational.
I know that this is not easy work. What keeps you going?
The kids. It’s always for the kids. And hope, I deeply believe that all things are possible and anything can happen if we let it (and work our tails off to make it happen). As a lawyer I was a zealous advocate for my clients. I can’t think of a more compelling ‘client’ to advocate for than a kid who has the internal drive, creativity and grit to push through obstacles and thrive in adversity. Sometimes they just need to know someone is on their team and there to make sure that they can activate the opportunities presented in their lives.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
You’ve got this!: My first week at PHA, after leaving the corner office and corporate law career, it took me 2 hours to print something on letterhead! I thought to myself, “what have I got myself into?!?”
That people will show up: I also left my entire community of colleagues and I had to build a whole new community of people. Some of whom might have wondered: “why did she go from being a lawyer to running a non-profit?” But you know what, I was blessed with some of the most amazing leaders in the sector who showed up for me. They took me under their wings, taught me the vernacular, which meetings I needed to be a part of, etc.
That it would be one of the greatest intellectual and emotional challenges of my life: Figuring out how to integrate systems together for the kids has been more intellectually challenging than arguing in front of the Court of Appeals.
How much fun it’s going to be!
That it would change my life in ways that I never would have imagined: The privilege of doing this work has been impactful on my life, but it’s also impacted my kids’ lives and husband’s in ways I could never have imagined. It’s changed us as a family in a really powerful way.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Movement for the kids. I think we need to start looking at all our systems and putting kids at the center. We all say that children are the future. Yet when we’re building systems, we don’t consider them at all. And then we are stuck dealing with problems and challenges that are created by failing to put kids first. So, I really do think that if we have a movement that’s for the kids where every system — healthcare, behavioral health, education, criminal justice, etc. — considers kids, it will completely transform the way our children grow up and how they contribute to society.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
One of my favorite quotes is from Mary Poppins the musical. “Anything can happen if you let it.” I think that is so true. So often we prevent ourselves from achieving something that is possible because we believe that it’s impossible. So, I think that if we allow ourselves to exercise the courage and fear at the same time and strive for something that’s bigger than ourselves, that anything truly can happen.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Bono! He is one of a small group of people who will be responsible for eradicating AIDS. He’s brought together people who wouldn’t ordinarily come together for this cause. And U2 is also one of my favorite bands and Bono is one of the greatest poets of our day!
How can our readers follow you online?
You can follow Project Hope Alliance on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
