Lewiston youth center dreams of raising age profile

Fundraising could begin soon for a new type of housing that would give young adults without stable families a place to live in Lewiston to avoid homelessness.

That is the hope of Michelle King, a founder of the LC Valley Youth Resource Center, a low-barrier homeless shelter that serves children 12 to 17 years old and is hoping to begin helping people a bit older as well.

With that in mind, the center is in the midst of a campaign to raise enough money to have a year’s worth of operational expenses in the bank. Donations are being accepted at avenuesforhope.org/organizations/lc-valley-youth-resource-center.

As soon as the center reaches the final $23,000 of the $33,000 goal, King and other supporters of area youths and young adults plan to begin seeking money on the new initiative.

Youths can stay overnight 365 days a year at the center when their homes are unsafe or drop in during the afternoon and early evenings.

Along with meals and shelter, the center provides a variety of services such as tutoring, laundry facilities and help with obtaining medical care and counseling.

A total of 441 individuals have used the services, all of which are provided for free, since the center opened three years ago, King said.

Many arrive after living in abusive homes or on the street for years without having access to education or basic necessities like food or adequate clothing.

With help from the center, they have opportunities to enroll in school, land jobs and identify career goals, she said.

The problem is teens can no longer stay at the shelter once they turn 18 years old, even if they are seniors in high school about to graduate, King said.

“We’re doing all of this and watching them become homeless on their 18th birthdays because there’s nowhere else to go,” she said.

What form the housing would take and where it would be located is still in the brainstorming phase, King said.

The structure could be a court of tiny homes with a central kitchen and social area, a large home with separate sleeping quarters for each tenant or apartments at a variety of locations or something entirely different.

Rental prices would be on a sliding scale based on the income of tenants, who would be required to pursue jobs or education.

Tenants would have around-the-clock access to case managers who could help them with everything from paying bills to seeking work to handling relationships, she said.

“It’s housing with training wheels,” King said.

King’s work on this new initiative comes at a time when the Youth Resource Center has been bolstering its financial stability in a variety of ways.

The center landed a $195,000 annual grant from the federal Family and Youth Services Bureau that runs for three years and has an option to renew. The nearly $200,000 covers about half of its yearly operating expenses.

A number of the programs the bureau supports have received money from it every year since it was founded 50 years ago, King said.

At the same time, the center doesn’t have a mortgage for its building, through an ownership arrangement with the Idaho Housing and Finance Association and a contribution of $150,000 from the city of Lewiston through a federal Community Development Block Grant, she said.

And the center is continuing to expand its services. It houses one of eight Safe Teen Assessment Centers in Idaho with a team that screens youths for issues such as suicide risk, substance abuse and childhood trauma.

Children don’t have to frequent the Youth Resource Center to be screened by the Safe Teen Assessment Center, which accepts referrals from law enforcement, educators and community resource providers.

That program just secured almost $200,000 from the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections. The money is making it possible to provide mental health assessments, which take about 2½ hours and are a prerequisite for getting mental health services paid for through government programs.

Since the assessments are so time-consuming, the wait to get them is long, King said.

“Once you’ve been assessed and you know what a path looks like to treatment, it overcomes a barricade and opens doors to providers,” she said.