Olive Avenue Confidential: Foster kids are everyone's children

The corporation plans to contract with the Family Services Agency of Burbank to manage the program, which Arandes said would include case management services and require participating youth to hold down a job, make small monthly "rent" payments (maybe $200 each), and save a significant portion of their income for after they grow out of the program.

In March, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors ordered an ongoing special review of programs affecting the ability of kids in foster care to develop into self-sufficient adults.

Housing, or lack thereof, is a primary focus of that effort, said Helen Berberian, a deputy for Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

Antonovich initiated the review, and Berberian says his office supports this and other local-level efforts to stabilize the lives of youth leaving foster care.

The Burbank Housing Corporation and Family Services Agency have already successfully partnered to provide transitional housing for homeless families and victims of domestic violence.

Preventing teen homelessness is an equally worthy cause because foster youth aren't someone else's kids, they're everyone's.

JOE PIASECKI is an Annenberg Fellow with USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a contributing editor for the Pasadena Weekly. He can be reached at piasecki@usc.edu.