CITY LIVING NY
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Mission Statement
At City Living NY, our mission is to empower youth aging out of foster care to successfully transition into adulthood by providing concrete resources, tools, and support services.
About This Cause
City Living NY (CLNY) is a comprehensive program which empowers and supports youth aging out of foster care in New York City. We begin work at the time of aging out of care, typically 21 but as young as 18 years old, to provide both short- and long-term support until age 26. Once youth reach this age they enter our Alumni Program, and still maintain their strong relationship with both their social worker and the agency; their is no "second aging out" experience with City Living NY. At the outset of our relationships, we provide clients with urgently needed essential household goods in order to meet their basic needs and begin turning their first apartment into a home. We design a service plan based on each young person’s unique needs and aspirations, empowering our clients to work towards stability and self-sufficiency by offering ongoing wrap-around support and connections with effective counseling, education, and job training programs. When foster care ends, our work begins. In New York City, 650-900 youth “age out” of care every year. These youth have been exposed to unfathomable trauma and challenges; our clients have suffered periods of homelessness, violence and sexual assault, teen pregnancy, and poverty. We give these youth the tools they need to be successful instead of waiting for them to struggle and potentially fail, and by doing this we hope to break the cycle of unemployment and homelessness for former foster care youth. By investing in these youth with time and resources we are empowering them to succeed and sending a message that they are an important part of our community. CLNY employs licensed master-level social workers, who start each relationship by helping our young people outfit their homes with items like pots, dishes, linens, curtains, mattresses and furniture. All of our youth select decor related items such as bedding, bathroom items, and curtains. We teach them how to shop for quality items, provide hands-on home skills training, and then expand to budget lessons, resume/career help and advanced education. We continue to monitor and work with the youth comprehensively, acting as the supportive adult connection these youth need to meet their individual goals. CLNY social workers maintain weekly contact with all young people to check in and help strengthen their physical and emotional stability. On the career front, CLNY assists youth with resume writing and job searches, career counseling, and interview readiness. Many of our youth have gained employment because of these efforts. At any given time over 85% of our youth are employed, well above the city average of 50%. CLNY also assists young people with education needs - helping college youth with tuition issues, internship guidance and re-enrollment challenges. While the national college graduation rate for foster youth hovers around 3%, almost 35% of our clients have graduated from college while working with CLNY. For our non-college enrolled youth, we make referrals to appropriate GED programs, and help them plan for the future; 63% of our clients are on track to make a living wage. CLNY provides youth with mental health referrals, financial literacy training, parenting items, nutritional workshops, and yoga classes. Most importantly, social workers assure housing stability; over 25% of our clients have needed some sort of housing intervention to remain stably housed. While the overall statistics on former foster youth rates of homelessness are staggering, 100% of CLNY clients currently remain in their apartments. City Living NY is one of the only programs, not only in NYC but nationally, dedicated exclusively to serving youth who are aging out of foster care. We help them set up their homes, meet their self-directed education and employment goals, and act as that caring adult we all need in our lives to succeed.