By the time Natasha Pierce found herself spending the night under Birmingham’s rainbow bridge, she’d already been sleeping in abandoned buildings for over two years.
But it wasn’t until that cold night in January of 2023 that Pierce realized she was homeless at 19 years old.
“I’m them now,” she thought as she surveyed the older men who also slept beneath the railroad underpass that night.
Both of Natasha’s parents died during the COVID pandemic, first her dad in 2020, then her mom a year later. She and her two siblings were among nearly 235,000 children in the United States who lost primary caregivers during the pandemic.
In Alabama alone, nearly 8,000 kids became orphaned or lost a caregiver to the pandemic, pushing some into homelessness, in what the national childhood bereavement organization, Evermore, called “a crisis hiding in plain sight.”
“For every youth we find, there’s at least another one that we did not find and cannot count,” said Michelle Farley, executive director of One Roof, an agency that connects homeless people in Birmingham to the services they need. “It is frightening to us when we see numbers go up at all, because we know there’s a lot more that we’re not seeing.”
It’s nearly impossible to know just how many teens are living on the streets. But federal data shows there are about 200 in Alabama, including dozens in Birmingham.
Youth homelessness is a growing problem nationwide, a trend amplified by the pandemic. From 2022 to 2023 alone, there was a 15% increase in the number of homeless teens and young adults.
Teens become homeless for a variety of reasons, such as running away, being kicked out of their homes, or aging out of foster care without a safety net.
And homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to trafficking, more likely to engage in survival sex for food or shelter, deal with substance abuse, get involved in criminal activity or become a victim of crime themselves.
Natasha said it didn’t take long for men to start approaching her, offering money in exchange for different favors.
“I just kept saying no, no, no, no,” she recalled.
“I really was in the back of my mind thinking, am I going to be living outside? Is this going to be my new normal?”
Miss Westery
Long before the pandemic exacerbated the crisis of youth homelessness, Alice Westery decided to do something about gaps in Alabama’s child welfare system. She said kids who aged out of foster care often returned to her office seeking help because they were homeless.
During nearly 15 years as the independent living coordinator for the Jefferson County Department of Human Resources, she said, she saw too many kids falling through the cracks.
Alice Westery is the founder of Youth Towers, a local organization that houses homeless youth and assists youth to prevent and end homelessness in Birmingham, Alabama. Tamika Moore | tmoore@al.com
First they’d come every month or so, asking for the phone number to the Salvation Army or homeless shelters. “Then it became every week, then several times a week,” she said.
Westery said they told her they couldn’t find affordable housing or transportation, and didn’t know how to navigate things like setting up a bank account or getting a license.
“They needed caring community support that was ready and willing to wrap around them… and help them do basic living things,” Westery said.
“I was the one who was gonna step up and do something about it.”
A spokesperson for DHR told AL.com that while the agency does not track whether kids who age out of foster care become homeless, they do provide independent living arrangements, including vouchers for public housing.
In 2016, Westery quit her job at DHR and devoted her time to Youth Towers, a Birmingham nonprofit she founded to help homeless youth, aged 19 to 24, find long-term housing.
The organization is almost entirely run by two women who grew up in Alabama: Westery and Deezandra Barfield, a social worker, who goes by Miss Dee Dee.
The organization has helped 65 young people find their own homes in the city in the last three years alone — a time when more kids than ever needed their help.
“I was the one who was gonna step up and do something about it.”
— Alice Westery, founder of Youth Towers
“The pandemic made everything so much worse because we started having people come in and say my momma and daddy died and I have nowhere to go,” Barfield said. “Can you imagine being that young and your family just vanishes and you’re left alone without anyone during a health crisis?”
‘Nowhere to go’
After her father died from Covid, Janay Williams left Florida in search of more opportunities to provide for her new baby in a bigger city across the state line.
Instead, at 18 years old and pregnant with her second child, she found herself in Birmingham without a place to live — crashing on friends’ couches or staying in hotel rooms.
“I just kept thinking I hope they don’t come take my baby because I don’t have nowhere to go,” Williams recalled to AL.com. “I couldn’t believe I was staying in a hotel with a baby, wondering every night where we’re gonna go.”
Williams imagined herself starting a new life for her young family and having a stable job.
She was in a program at Lawson State Community College to become a certified nursing assistant. That’s where someone told her about Youth Towers.
But Williams was only 18, living in a state where the age of majority is 19 years old. And while lawmakers in 2019 made it legal for 18-year-olds to sign leases and other contracts, landlords still refused to rent to her.
“I just kept thinking I hope they don’t come take my baby because I don’t have nowhere to go. I couldn’t believe I was staying in a hotel with a baby, wondering every night where we’re gonna go.”
— Janay Williams
Westery’s organization has had some luck with helping 18-year-olds by establishing relationships with landlords in the city who trust her.
With help from Youth Towers, Williams moved into a two-bedroom apartment in December 2023 and gave birth to her daughter just two months later.
She had her son’s first birthday party in March at their new home.
“Now he has a home and if anybody came, they would see he’s well taken care of, he has somewhere to sleep, his own bed,” Williams said. “It’s a big relief not having to worry about things like that anymore.”
The next generation
Youth Towers not only helps find homes for young people, the nonprofit sets them up to become independent.
The organization pays their deposits as well as their full rent for three months. But then, it scales payments down by 25% every three months. The goal is that after a year, the residents are paying their own rent and expenses.
Youth Towers also does furniture drives so the residents have beds to sleep on and tables to eat at.
Almost all of the dozen young people who spoke to AL.com about their experience with the organization, said that having an apartment, support and guidance sets their families up for a generational impact.
Alice Westery (standing) is the founder of Youth Towers, a local organization that houses homeless youth and assists youth in Birmingham, Ala. Deezandra Barfield, a social worker, handles the administration of the organization. Tamika Moore | tmoore@al.com
A young woman named DeAnna Marshall found Youth Towers after a few months at a shelter. She said she’d been in foster care since she got pregnant at 16 and had no family she could turn to when she aged out at 21.
Another woman, T’Aries Marshall, said she had nowhere to go with her baby after his father was shot in Birmingham. She said they were living in a car when he died. The vehicle was considered part of the crime scene, she said, so Youth Towers helped her find a home where she could care for her son, who has autism.
A young man named Isaiah Lewis said he had been living in his car for over a year after his grandmother passed. He said he was shaving in the bathroom at Railroad Park when a man told him about Youth Towers.
“I feel really good about being in a position where I’m in my own apartment, I’m taking care of my family, my fiancé gets to stay at home and raise our kids and nourish them, teach them and they get to see the father providing for their family,” he told AL.com. “And I do feel like that would influence my kids and next generations as well in a very powerful way.”
Youth Towers connects young people with jobs, education programs and transportation. They hold clothing drives for their participants, including scrub drives for those working in healthcare, like Williams. The organization even hosts holiday meals for participants and their children.
“Ultimately it’s not a hand out,” Barfield told AL.com. “We’re just trying to help them to become more independent, and help those who want it and want to maintain their housing and stability.”
People who have gone through the program now sit on the organization’s board to help guide its mission and to identify other young people who need support.
“Everything that we offer came from the young people who told me what they needed to live stable lives,” Westery said.
‘Gave me hope’
That cold January night under the rainbow bridge, Pierce began to pray, asking God to tell her it was going to be OK.
When she lifted her head, a flier with information for shelters “flew across me,” she recalled. “It was like an act of God.”
The next day she went to the Salvation Army shelter. She got a job at McDonalds, working as often as she could, saving as much of her $10 an hour pay as possible.
“I was there at 4 o’clock, ready to work every day,” she said. “I actually asked for no off days.”
After three months at the shelter, Pierce got a referral to Youth Towers. She recognized the office on Cotton Ave, located a few doors down from the funeral home where services were held for her parents.
At first, she was skeptical of the promises Youth Towers made to find her an apartment.
“Ultimately it’s not a hand out. We’re just trying to help them to become more independent, and help those who want it and want to maintain their housing and stability.”
— Deezandra Barfield, social worker at Youth Towers
But it didn’t take long for Westery and Barfield to show her a list of places she could afford with her salary at McDonald’s. They found a studio in Ensley and Youth Towers inspected it, paid her deposit and helped with rent the first year.
She put up photos of her dad on the walls and aspirational sayings to keep her motivated.
A few months in, McDonalds told Pierce that if she could find steady transportation, they would promote her to general manager.
So Youth Towers connected her with Hearts of Wheels, a local organization that helps at-risk youth find cars and access driving courses. Pierce got a free Toyota Corolla.
Natasha Pierce stands in front of a car given to her by a Birmingham organization, Hearts of Wheels, which helps at-risk youth find cars and access driving courses. Courtesy of Hearts of Wheels
She said she learned to manage her money, and with rent support and a car, she was able to save for a house.
“Youth Towers gave me hope and made my life easier,” she said. “They made so much possible for me.”
‘Our city’s most precious resource’
Youth Towers mostly relies on money from businesses and individual donors, as well as some grants from the federal government. Westery said she hasn’t received any money from the city, Jefferson County or the state. She said she sometimes “has to dip into my husband’s pockets” to keep the organization running.
Organizations that provide services to homeless people in Alabama are quick to share that there are not enough resources available. Though there are more than 200 homeless young people, the state only has 151 beds available for them in shelters or other housing options.
“We don’t have enough resources to keep up with the youth who are becoming homeless and that’s problematic,” said Farley with One Roof.
Most money that goes toward services and prevention efforts in Alabama comes from the federal government.
Birmingham has paid more attention to the issue since the World Games in 2022 brought more than 140,000 spectators to the city. There were concerns that the Games would displace homeless people, prompting a plan to build temporary shelters. The shelters — small sheds for individuals — were never built as construction materials were stolen and controversy arose over whether the project was humane.
A few months before the Games, the city gave $1.3 million to AIDS Alabama to build Birmingham’s first youth homeless shelter.
Mayor Randall Woodfin, speaking at the ribbon cutting in 2022, said “young people are our city’s most precious resource,” adding that the shelter was “giving them the protection they need at the most critical and vulnerable moment.”
Mayor Randall Woodfin attends the ribbon cutting for Birmingham’s first homeless youth shelter alongside staff from AIDS Alabama on Aug. 4, 2022. Savannah Tryens-Fernandes | stryens-fernandes@al.com
A few months after Woodfin gave his speech, homelessness in America reached its highest point in the history of data collection, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Though shelters are set up to provide emergency assistance, homeless youth say they don’t set them up for long-term success. Shelters often have curfews that limit job options. Some youth told AL.com that they worried about safety, particularly for their children.
Youth Towers instead provides a “housing first” model. Farley and other experts say that’s the most effective way to help youth successfully transition from the streets.
“We want to put them in housing now and get them what they need while they’re in a house. Because doesn’t that make more sense?” Farley said.
“The streets are very different, it’s about survival. You’re not interested in getting clean. You can’t go to court. You don’t know what day it is, you’re not always able to get internet access. You’re not able to do what you need if you’re worried about where you can sleep safely at night. We get somebody in a house so they don’t have that worry.”
‘Safe and complete’
After their parents died, Pierce’s older brother, who was 18 at the time, went off to North Carolina to find work, while her little sister went to live with relatives in Texas.
In April, Pierce got custody of her sister, Tanasha, who is now 16 — the same age as Pierce when she first became homeless.
Natasha Pierce experienced homelessness beginning at the age of 16 after losing her parents during the COVID pandemic. The Birmingham native got support from Youth Towers, a local organization that houses homeless youth. Tamika Moore | tmoore@al.com
Pierce wanted to move into a house so her sister could have her own room. These last few years without her siblings had been lonely, and she was excited to have someone to live with again.
But landlords weren’t willing to rent to her when they discovered old debts she still owed.
She went to Youth Towers, unsure if they would still help her. She’d already finished her year of rent support with the program and was paying for an apartment entirely on her own.
But the organization found a landlord that would work with her, and in July she moved into a two-bedroom house in Fairfield with a deck and a backyard, just a few miles from where she grew up.
Tanasha said she had been lonely, too, during those three years in Texas with her aunt.
“I felt like I didn’t have nobody except for phone calls from my sister and brother when I was always used to us being together,” Tanasha said.
Now she said it’s like having a bit of her childhood back. Since they’ve been reunited the sisters go on long car rides together to make up for lost time.
Pierce, who hopes to be a chef one day, cooks for her little sister.
They even work together at McDonald’s.
Tanasha is now a junior in high school with dreams of going to college.
But for now she’s enjoying life with her sister again.
“For the first time since my parents died, I feel safe and complete,” she said.
Natasha Pierce experienced homelessness beginning at the age of 16 after losing her parents during the COVID pandemic. The Birmingham native got support from Youth Towers, a local organization that houses homeless youth. She enjoys cooking and wants to become a chef. Tamika Moore | tmoore@al.com
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Publish date : 2024-10-17 00:08:00
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