Homeless Youth Alliance Partnership

Since 2008, HRTC has been teaming up with the Homeless Youth Alliance (HYA) to bring mental health and harm reduction drug treatment to youth who primarily live and hang out in Haight Ashbury, which has been home to homeless youth for 50 years.  We began staffing a therapist one day per week to see clients at HYA’s drop-in center and to facilitate a staff support group.  We now dedicate staff 40hrs per week- offering individual therapy, working at HYA’s syringe access program, and doing street outreach.  In addition we dedicate a therapist to staff support.

The ” Homeless Treatment Team”

In 2018 HRTC was asked by the SF Department of Public Health Transition Age Youth System of Care to pilot new ways to reach homeless youth who have escaped very traumatic lives.  These young people live in the parks and on the streets in community with each other, far from the institutions that have robbed them of the unconditional love and acceptance they need to grow into adults confident in themselves and in their abilities.

With the harm reduction spirit of meeting people where they are, we knew we needed to find these youth and take harm reduction therapy to them.  We hit the streets.  But instead of the traditional outreach backpack full of snacks, shampoo, and syringes, we needed to take all the trappings of harm reduction therapy.  Why, and what did that mean?

Homeless youth don’t hide out and avoid institutions for nothing.  They have been harmed by the mental health system.  25% lived part or most of their lives in the foster system; 75% have been diagnosed or misdiagnosed (especially if you were a youth of color) with a mental health disorder; most have been forced to go to a therapist who was more interested in “changing their behavior” than in understanding and relieving their suffering.

So what did we do?  We bought and converted a large van into a therapy office, bought canopies, chairs and coffee tables, purchased a stove, found places where youth live and hang out, and set up pop-up drop-in centers complete with friendly therapists who don’t ask a single question you don’t want to answer, serve food, play music, and have whatever conversation you want.  Imagine what happened!  We were inundated, and it wasn’t long before we were asked to expand our services to homeless adults.

Transition Age Youth Navigation Center – HRTC’s newest program!

In March of 2021, our friends at the 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic in SF’s Southeast District, opened a new Navigation Center, (shelter with enhanced services) for Transition Age Youth (TAY, 18-24yo) in SF’s Tenderloin neighborhood.  It is a beautiful space, with many wrap around services including vocational training and case management.  Immediately identifying the need for harm reduction therapists with specific TAY experience, 3rd Street Youth reached out and asked us to develop their mental health service.  PTSD, depression, anxiety, active drug use (think drugs as medicine), high rates of suicide are all conditions that plague homeless youth, and their developmental needs cannot be overstated.  With 75 youth who have had traumatic lives living in one dormitory, the need for mental health treatment is overwhelming.

Joi Jackson-Morgan, Executive Director of 3rd Street Youth, knows just how critical this need is. “This (Mental Health Care) is prevention. If you put it at the forefront of their issues they are less likely to have to keep leaning on the system later in life.”