YouthREACH’s Carletta Gaston, left, hands out gloves and toiletries at the STA Plaza. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
HOMELESSNESS
Where are all the Children? Roaming downtown and seeking out homeless kids, YouthREACH offers more than handwarmers and hygiene packets BY DEANNA PAN
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TA Plaza downtown is packed. Outside, the temperature has dipped below freezing. Inside, it’s toasty and crowded. People mill about, wearing coats and hats, hoisting bags on their hips, dragging suitcases behind them. They eat pretzels and pizza, buy lottery tickets, wait for their ride home. “Boss lady! Boss lady! Food!” A girl, no older than 15, dressed in black from head to toe with pink stripes in her hair, comes bounding down the escalator, arms wide, giggling. All the kids at the plaza have street names. Carletta
Gaston’s is “Boss Lady” and everywhere she goes, people recognize her. Gaston rummages through her bag, pulling out gloves and hand warmers, but the girl just wants water and candy. Gaston has long, auburn hair, perfect skin, a dusky voice and a certain swagger that belies her age. She’s only 20, but she could easily pass for 30. She’s at the plaza working for YouthREACH, a newly restored street outreach program that connects homeless youth with resources. In the past 10 days, Gaston and two other outreach workers from YFA Connections and
Crosswalk have served more than 140 different kids, handing out bottles of water, socks, hats, gloves, Halloween candy, snacks, deodorant, toothpaste and condoms. For years, YFA Connections and Crosswalk ran a robust street outreach program, providing resources to homeless teenagers, until they lost a federal grant in 2011. Now with new funding from United Way, they’re back roaming downtown and combing for kids in parks, alleys, under overpasses, at the mall, skate park and the bus plaza. Morgan Belveal, a case manager at YFA and one of the outreach workers, keeps a binder with multicolored tabs. He tracks the number of new kids they meet, the familiar faces, what they give away and where they do it. He charts their course in neon highlighter and maps the hot spots where they’ve met groups of kids. Their job right now is to gain the trust of these kids, build relationships and search for trends in the data. If YouthREACH is going to last, they’ll need funding, so they have to prove that what they’re doing is important. Gaston’s presence in the group gives them street cred. She knows most of these kids. She can relate to ...continued on next page
DECEMBER 12, 2013 INLANDER 13