The Union
Jennifer Nobles Staff Writer Nov 21, 2025
Bright Futures for Youth offered detailed information including panel testimonials on its SAFE Program to a crowd of about 100 community stakeholders gathered in the Litton Building Thursday. The program detailed what the organization has determined to be a critical and fast-growing problem surrounding an increasing number of children and young adults who are experiencing housing instability.
SAFE — an acronym for Stability, Access, Foundation, Empowerment — has assisted more than 500 children and young adults 25 years of age and younger since 2020.
“It’s important to highlight that the SAFE program is addressing needs of youth experiencing homelessness through case management services,” said Jennifer Singer of Bright Futures For Youth.
Ideally, Singer added, the organization offers basic needs and support to clients who are primarily unaccompanied minors which means they have likely not been in foster care or have been aged out. Singer said many of those kids have fallen through the cracks. SAFE looks to repair that.
Thursday’s program addressed issues that young people are potentially faced with, depending on the stability of their upbringing. Generational trauma is real, said many of the panelists.
Jevon Wilkes, Executive Director of California Youth Coalition, was on hand to share his experience in rising from life on the streets to becoming the ambassador for the state-wide coalition which strives to help young misplaced people.
“Our end goal is to end youth homelessness,” said Wilkes. “We understand when you address youth homelessness you also address chronic homelessness. Our agency is to improve and empower the lives of California’s youth.”
California Youth Coalition has been in existence since 1979.
“I’ve been homeless, been involved in the system, and was blessed to (become) executive director to just continue to push the work forward,” said Wilkes. “It’s been my life. Sometimes it’s hard to hear the young people speak about what impacted me when I was young.”
Four “kiddos,” as Singer would refer to them, are just figuring out what life skills they need to obtain and what resources they have to gain that knowledge, ranging from everything from how to set up a bank account to how to gain experience in the rental market without previous experience. The help of the SAFE program has allowed them to move on from traumatic experiences.
One panelist in the youth bracket said she had run up against difficulties in accessing resources, and many of them face barriers to stable housing, job availability, safety and family support.
Many youth experiencing homelessness are dealing with internal struggles at home, and seek to be independent as opposed to living with parents who have struggles of their own, preventing them from being the best guardians they can be. A word often used throughout the conference was “generational,” meaning tendencies of parents can often pass onto their children. Those tendencies are not always the best for the child in the situation.
One of the items that was brought up in SAFE’s listening sessions with its clients was ways to educate youth on building credit which would allow them to find housing.
“If you’re 18 and you’ve already been through homelessness, you definitely want to start your life,” said SAFE panelist and participant Emily. “You do not want to wait; you want to jump right in.”
Other presenters in a later forum included representatives from Nevada County Department of Social Services, Bringing Families Home, Nevada County Probation, CalWorks Housing Support Program (HSP), and Community Beyond Violence.
Rachel Peña, Director of Social Services for Nevada County listed some of the ways her department is working to address youth homelessness including the Bringing Families Home funding source as well as the HSP program, which is currently working with families and children.
The county also participates in the CalWorks program which is working with 165 youth who are either pregnant or parenting between the ages of 16 and 24. Additionally the program has partnered with the Nevada City Superintendent of Schools office to focus on transitional housing programs.
Jeff Goldman, Nevada County’s Chief Probation Officer, said that when youth have gotten into trouble in the past, Juvenile Hall was a housing option. His department doesn’t want to see that be the case, and they are more interested in providing services before the child is in a predicament.
“We did pull some data, and out of the first 200 referrals, only one kid ended up in the system,” said Goldman. “We feel like we’re doing a good job of not pulling them back into the system by front loading some of that stuff.”
One overlying message of Thursday’s meeting was the cost of living locally.
“There’s incredible wealth disparity in our communities,” Peña said. “It is really hard to afford housing if you haven’t had the life advantages of stable income, stable housing, and healthy relationships throughout your life.”
Staff Writer Jennifer Nobles can be reached at jnobles@theunion.com.