Senate version of the Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act

 

Brown bill would help youth aging out of foster care
Tom Jackson, Sandusky Register, 12/7/2019

When Columbus resident Cloé Cooper aged out of the foster care system when she turned 18, she intended to go to college. Instead, she became homeless.

“After months of couch-surfing from one bad area of town to another, I eventually had to drop out of school and went on to work a minimum wage job full time,” Cooper told reporters on a Wednesday conference call hosted by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Cooper, a student and employee at Columbus State Community College in Columbus, said it took years for her to earn enough money to go back to college.

Brown introduced Cooper to Ohio news reporters to dramatize the need for the “Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act,” a bipartisan bill to help young people who have aged out of the foster care system receive a public housing voucher for up to 24 months, allowing them to get on their feet while trying to start an independent adult life. 

Brown told the reporters that across the U.S., 20,000 people age out of foster care every year. Up to a third of them are homeless at some point, Brown said.

“You don’t have the same family safety net to fall back on others have,” Brown said.

Brown said the measure was approved in the House and is awaiting action in the Senate. It’s co-sponsored by a Republican, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Brown said he hopes that will aid the measure’s chances of passing the Senate, too.

More than 80 organizations have endorsed the bill, including the Ohio Youth Advisory Board, ACTION Ohio and the Ohio Children’s Alliance.

Brown’s bill comes as the number of children in foster care in Ohio has risen, largely in response to the ongoing drug addiction epidemic. Ohio had 16,185 children in foster care in October 2019, including 80 in Erie County, according to statistics on the website of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

That’s up from 12,511 young people in foster care in October 2009. Foster care cases rose in Erie County, too, spiking to more than 100 in 2014, but officials worked to bring the number down with a concerted effort to find permanent homes for children, reducing foster care cases to 74 by December 2018.