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By Jessyka Heredia
November 21, 2023 (El Cajon)—
Outside El Cajon’s city hall on Nov. 16, youth activists gathered with the local outreach group Home Start to show the need for more housing for homeless youths, as well as funding to get kids off the streets and stop a cycle of lifelong homelessness.
Since 1972, Home Start has been following its mission to insure that “every child in San Diego has “a safe, stable, and nurturing home.” But Home Start doesn’t just help kids; they help families and the homeless in general. Home Start is the primary outreach in our East County region, with five different programs currently running: Community Services for Families, Maternity Housing Program, Behavior Health Services, First 5 Steps and Communities In Action. Last year, Home Start served more than 15,000 San Diegans in need of services.
At the rally, the group circled the block in downtown El Cajon with protest signs that read, “28,428 unaccompanied homeless children and youth in California” and “More affordable housing for our youth.” They ended their march in front of City Hall, just across the street from one of their outreach locations.
One of the youths in attendance is a success story for the Home Start Housing Our Youth (HOY) program, Abigaile Vasquez, read a poem she wrote titled “Survival of the Fittest” It told her story of growing up witnessing drug abuse, homelessness and neglect. The poem is a testimony to changing that pattern in her life and finding the road to success, thanks to this Home Start program. Vasquez told ECM that after completing the program, she is now giving back to other youths in similar situations. Vasquez said she “wants to help kids, especially homeless youth,” adding that she hopes she can help them to succeed as she has in the program.
Laura A Tancredi-Baese, CEO of Home Start told ECM, “We are shining a light on youth homelessness. November is National Runaway and Homeless Youth Prevention Month across the country. Today we are saying, `Let’s gathe.Let’s have a rally to call attention to this issue.”
A national survey on youth homelessness found approximately 4.2 million youth up to 24 years of age experience homelessness every year in the United States. Federal statistics show California remains the state with the highest population of people experiencing homelessness overall and the highest number of unaccompanied homeless youth.
Tancredi-Baese said California has at least 30,000 young people who are homeless. She added that t there are “at least 1500 young people on the streets in San Diego County. We think that’s an undercount because young people are often invisible, couch surfing. They blend in and try to keep it a secret, and are often escaping domestic violence and sexual exploitation.”
Home Start wants people to know that young people deserve a “bed, a front door, and we want more housing, because it is preventative. If you help a young person its going too prevent them from becoming chronically homeless,” Tancredi-Baese said, adding that half of the homeless have been chronically homeless.
The organization is focusing on teens and young adults up to 24 years old, or Transition Age Youth (TAY). Home Start has a contract with San Diego State University to provide housing for students at San Diego State with units in La Mesa.
ECM asked Tancredi-Baese what the public can do to help with this important cause. She replied, “The public can help in a number of ways--from making a small donation to choosing to be a volunteer. There’s a bunch of ways you can volunteer and get involved.”
Tancredi-Baese expressed the need for “more units, especially in the east region.” East County has the second highest number of homeless in the county, after the city of San Diego, yet East County has one of the region’s lowest rate of resources, she explained.
Also in attendance was El Cajon Councilmember Michelle Metschel, who spoke to Vasquez after the rally to encourage her, telling the youth that she lived a similar story. ECM reached out to Metschel to see if she would tell us more about her life experience and how the speakers impacted her.
Metschel told ECM that her childhood was filled with neglect, abuse, drugs. Despite all of that, she was able to escape that life here in the East County once she was 18. Metschel shared that after her mother started selling drugs “and started doing the drugs she was selling and ended up with heart exhaustion, she was then taken away in an ambulance and we got put into foster care.” Metschel was only 14 at the time, with three younger siblings.
Metschel described how she then would go looking for her mom. “Even though she was the reason why we were all in this, when you’re 14 and you’ve been verbally abused since you were young, you still want your mom because you don’t know anything else.”
Metschel spoke about the homeless situation and the lack of affordable housing in the county. “We have more people going into homelessness than are getting out. My friend at Home Start, Karina Hernandez, she said to me one time, ‘We need to humanize homelessness.’” Metschel emphasized that it is a complex problem. “Let’s see what we can do like build tiny homes for transitional housing, getting actual low-income housing, and 'd like to see a bigger pot go into section 8. There are people waiting up to 20 years to get their section 8 housing. I think we need a little bit of everything.”
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