Homeless teens couch surf while advocates hope for a shelter

Just as the city of South Lake Tahoe blurs the line between rural and urban communities, the city's teen homeless population strikes an uneasy balance between temporary housing arrangements and true life on the streets.

"Couch surfers" are those without any other place to go, besides gracious accommodations from friends and families.

"I've couch surfed everywhere I've ever lived," said Logan Brennenman, a senior at Mt. Tallac High School. "It's a lot easier in Tahoe than anywhere else. If you have a lot of friends, you can almost always find a place to go."

While Brennenman spoke of an abundance of people willing to take in homeless teens, the web of friends and families isn't foolproof.

"I was having a lot of problems," said Sylvio Brochinni, a 17-year-old who couch surfed in Tahoe between the ages of 15 and 17, but recently moved to the Central Valley. "I would stay at my friend's house for a couple weeks, and then go to another friend's house for a couple weeks."

Brochinni's network of friends' families couldn't always fill the teenager's housing demands, sometimes requiring him to camp out during Tahoe's winter months.

Such precarious housing is not an uncommon occurrence at the South Shore.

Cheyanne Lane, street outreach coordinator with Tahoe Youth and Family Services, said she knows between 50 and 60 children in South Lake Tahoe who are homeless, most of them meandering between the accommodations of acquaintances.

Although Lane does weekly outreach for homeless teens in the casino corridor through TYFS, she doesn't presume to know every homeless teen in town, and suspects the number is higher.

South Lake Tahoe Unified School District recorded 296 homeless teens enrolled in school during the 2005-2006 school year, according to a report in the Sacramento Bee.

"There is a multitude of reasons kids are doing what they're doing," said Lane.

Abuse, getting kicked out of a home, the death of a parent, parents leaving the area and a child wanting to stay, and parental incarceration are typical circumstances for the under-18 set who end up without stable accommodations.

"None of the kids I've helped have been homeless for frivolous reasons," said Kim Gayner, South Shore youth advocate. "If homelessness is a better choice, how bad must their home life be?"

Not all of the couch homeless become street homeless, but, without the barrier of a shelter in South Lake Tahoe, the division between the two can be brittlely thin.

"Identifying the couch-homeless is important because people are often couch-homeless before they become street-homeless," according to a recently-released study on the rates couch-homelessness, entitled the Hoback Report. "People in difficult situations can often find someone to stay with, but only for a limited time."

By the numbers

1.65- Percent of U.S. residents estimated to be couch homeless

4,975,559- Number U.S. residents estimated to be couch homeless

1.6- Percent of El Dorado county residents estimated to be couch homeless.

2,955- Number of El Dorado County residents estimated to be couch homeless

1.5- Percent of Douglas county residents estimated to be couch homeless.

699- Number of Douglas county residents estimated to be couch homeless.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau and the Hoback Report



Drop-in center slated for summer

With a proposal for a teen homeless shelter in South Lake Tahoe put on hold for another year, Tahoe Youth and Family Services hopes to have a drop-in center up and running early this summer.

State agencies invited TYFS to apply for a deferred loan given specially for the development of homeless shelters, but Youth and Family Service's focus on people under the age of 18 precluded the service from getting the needed funds.

"Eventually, we'd love to help 18 to 24 year olds, but right now we don't have any funding," said Alissa Nourse, executive director of Tahoe Youth and Family Services.

TYFS hopes to have the teen drop-in center up and running by July. The center will be housed in the TYFS's current building and will provide emergency items, Safeway cards and phone cards to homeless youth, according to Nourse.

The center may also provide a place for homeless youth to shower and access a computer to fill out job applications and create resumes.

Hope for a true youth homeless shelter in Tahoe remains, but it looks as though it may take some time.

"Over the next year is when we'll really be doing a big push for funding directed towards the shelter," said Nourse.