For the 20,000 young people aging out of foster care each year, transitioning out of a support system and into the broader community can bring unique challenges—one of the first of which is securing housing. Currently, there’s bipartisan support for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to better meet the needs of these young people.

HUD’s Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) initiative can help prevent homelessness among young people who age out of foster care. These programs provide special-purpose housing choice vouchers that subsidize housing costs in the private rental market for 36 months for eligible young people. The vouchers are also accompanied by supportive services, which last 18 months for FUP and 36 months for FYI.

We evaluated the FUP and a FUP-FSS (Family Self-Sufficiency) demonstration for young people and found three policy changes could remove barriers and help them better serve young people who age out of foster care and prevent homelessness.

1. Make it easier for young people to access FUP/FYI.

Young people applying for FUP/FYI are faced with the same housing voucher application as adults, including providing several forms of documentation, such as forms of identification and proof of income, as well as complicated application language that makes it difficult for anyone—especially young people—to complete these applications. PHA staff we surveyed noted that an incomplete application is one of the most common reasons young people don’t successfully use the voucher.

Young people who complete the application are forced to face the housing rental market, often for the first time. Staff and youth involved in FUP who we interviewed noted landlords often perceive these young people as high-risk tenants because of their age, limited rental histories, or poor credit scores. Young people who are unable to find viable rental units in time can have their voucher expire, never being able to capitalizeon the program.

The following changes would enable young people to access these programs’ benefits:

- Support with the application for the program, including help getting documentation needed for program eligibility.

- Support searching for an eligible housing unit. A housing navigator can help young people find units within the right price range and negotiate with landlords.

- More time to search for a viable housing unit. The time young people are given is the same as adults with more experience in the housing market. Although young people (and adults) can apply for housing search extensions with evidence of proven search activity, this is an added stress and complication.

2. Change the way services are administered so they’re more accessible and better meet young people’s needs.

HUD assigns public child welfare agencies (PCWAs) to administer or contract supportive services to young people who age out of foster care and sign a lease with a FUP/FYI voucher. However, PCWA caseworkers have limited access to young people once they exit foster care, child welfare cases are closed upon foster care exit, and a young person must technically have exited foster care and live on their own to receive FUP/FYI. Furthermore, HUD doesn’t fund the services these programs require, leaving it to the PCWAs to tap other funding sources. Some young people report only receiving services if they happened to hear about them.

Once in FUP/FYI, young people are in contact with the public housing authority (PHA) to receive the housing subsidy. Therefore, it could make more sense for the PHA to contract supportive services. And because so many young people have had negative experiences with the foster care system and government services generally, they may be more willing to engage with a PHA than a PCWA.

Although the PHA likely cannot administer all the services needed itself, the PHA, rather than the PCWA, could be the responsible party to supply necessary resources to community-based organizations that provide trauma-informed care for young people. To make this work, HUD could provide funding to the PHA to administer to locally relevant programs for as long as young people need them.

3. Remove the voucher time limit for young people

Young people aging out of foster care who lease a rental unit with a voucher have a time limit of 36 months, with the opportunity to increase it to 60 months under certain conditions. They’re the only population subject to a time limit with their housing voucher. For other groups (e.g., families, veterans, people with disabilities, and seniors), housing vouchers have no time limit.

This time limit means that even if a young person isn’t economically stable enough to afford their housing unit, the subsidy will expire. However, evidence shows three to five years may not be sufficient for young people who’ve aged out of foster care to deal with trauma, complete their education, gain work experience that will put them on a path to cover rent, and learn financial literacy. In particular, a voucher time limit that occurs before the young adult completes a higher degree can derail their progress at a critical time in their ability to build self-sufficiency.

Young people who age out of foster care face challenges to paying for higher education, obtaining job training and employment opportunities, and navigating health care and other systems alone. Obtaining stable housing is a first step toward ensuring they can tackle these other challenges. Luckily, the FUP/FYI and FSS programs exist—but significant policy changes could help them remove barriers to access, more effectively meet the needs of young people, prevent homelessness, and improve their long-term trajectories.