Refuge provided for homeless teens

" In this day and age, it isn't hard to become a homeless teen," said Lisa Preston, executive director of Street Teens. "We've had a lot of kids who are living with their families in a weekly rental, and they come home and everyone has moved out and is just gone."

Street Teens is a 10-year-old nonprofit organization that provides homeless teens with a place to recharge, regroup and resupply. It provides a place to clean up, get some food and achieve some semblance of normalcy in a situation that should be anything but normal.

"We try to figure out where they are, what they need," Preston said. "We try to figure out whether they've completed their education, if they need to be enrolled in school or they need to get work, whatever their case may be."

The organization serves homeless people 12 to 21, which is a very different population from the adult homeless.

"Our kids stay away from downtown; they're so terrified of the homeless adults," Preston said. "They've had bad experiences when they've come into contact with them."

Typically, homeless teens stay closer to the grid, where they feel safer. Homeless teens might still attend school, hang out with friends at the mall and then head "home" to an abandoned building or a weekly rental they've acquired by pooling their money with other homeless teens.

"Most of them couch surf," Preston said. "They stay with a friend until they wear out their welcome and then move on to another friend's house."

Homeless teens may fall into the cracks of social services, where official government agencies are unable legally to give them the help they need.

"There are a couple of places that take kids," Preston said. "But if you're under 18 and you go to an overnight facility, the first thing they have to do is contact your parents, and that's not an option for a lot of kids who are fleeing an abusive home."

It's for that reason that Street Teens doesn't have any federal, state or county funding. It gets by on donations and grants.

"The restrictions are ... well, I don't want to use the word 'ridiculous,' " Preston said. "With the red tape attached to government funding, we couldn't take kids in without ID, which can take six to 10 weeks to get."

Helping kids get a birth certificate or other identification is one of the many services Street Teens provides. It has a computer lab, monitored by an adult volunteer, where kids can check their email and keep in touch with friends and family or do job searches and work on resumes. Volunteers from the human resources department of Cirque du Soleil helps them with job skills and training.

"If they're under 18 and unable to work without a parent's consent, sadly they can fall into prostitution or survival crime, stealing from stores to eat," Preston said. "We're able to help prevent that. We help cover their basic needs and keep them from having to resort to those kinds of things."

Because teens can become prey to unscrupulous adults, Street Teens does not advertise its location. Teens in need of help can reach the organization by phone toll-free at 877-588-3367.

"We work with school systems, guidance counselors. We partner with several different agencies and do outreach," Preston said. "But mainly kids find us through word of mouth from other kids."

Street Teens also can connect homeless teens with doctors and dentists, services Preston said might otherwise be unavailable to them. At times some of the rooms in Street Teens offices become de facto examination rooms and clinics.

A few months ago the organization nearly found itself without a home.

"The rooms we had been renting since we first opened our doors was bought," Preston said. "It was part of a whole complex that the new owner had plans for."

Paul Dudzinski, project manager for the Henderson-based McCarthy Building Company, heard about the organization's need from one of his staff members, who had heard about it in church.

"We took on some pro bono services as their construction manager," Dudzinski said. "We were able to step in and help them find and renovate a building of their own to fit their needs. We were able to help manage the construction process and subcontractors and help them with permitting and basically get them going."

After looking at about a half-dozen places, organizers found a short-sale home that had been in renovation for some time.

"The windows were covered in black tar paper, and there were waist-high weeds in the yard," Preston said. "We didn't have any trouble with the neighbors, because I think they were happy to see it being cleaned up."

Dudzinski said the building was in rough shape at the start of the project, citing a roof that needed replacing, new windows that had been cut out but never finished and a lot of interior work, including some sewer line issues.

"They had a $150,000 budget," Dudzinski said. "The work alone would normally have run closer to $240,000. We managed to bring it in because we really wanted to help these kids."

Street Teens is still settling in to the new digs, and organizers are working a few bugs out of the system, but Preston said that they're adjusting. What the organization needs most are basic things for the teens.

"Really what we need are direct services for the kids," Preston said, "sleeping bags, tents, sunscreen, food, canned pasta and chili, bottled water, that sort of thing. There are so many kids coming in now, it's hard to keep up with the need. We've doubled in numbers. We have so many kids that we're struggling, too."

For information about Street Teens, visit streetteens.org or call 809-3585 or 877-588-3367 .

Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.