How to Leave Home Before 18

Hi, everyone!

Okay okay, that’s enough pleasantries. I’m worked up.

A while back, I read an article about queer teens being thrown out of their homes by unsupportive families. It had a lot of advice that sounded pretty good on the surface. Talk to your teachers and guidance counselors! Pursue legal emancipation! Seek therapy!

“Bah,” I scoffed through a mouthful of Babybel cheese. “Amateurs! Someone needs to write a real guide. Someone who actually knows what it’s like!”

And I was too busy playing with that weird red wax to remember I was exactly that person.

I left home when I was a junior in high school. The reasons were complicated and sad. Suffice to say I was driven to find physical and psychological safety I wasn’t getting at home.

Everything worked out for me. I got lucky and landed on my feet. Did I pick up a few psychological scars from the experience? Yes—but they added to my roguish charm! The thing is, I went into it completely blind. Which isn’t the best strategy. Sorta like throwing yourself down a mountain and hoping you learn to ski on the way down. (Also a thing I did once. How am I alive???)

In my experience, most of the advice for young people in this situation is insufficient—and a bunch of it is fucking delusional. Today’s article is a guide that I wish I could’ve read when I was a kid.

This is an updated, expanded version of an article we first published in 2019. I think it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever written, and it’s one of the most popular articles in the long and storied history of Bitches Get Riches. I’ve added a bunch of new stuff, including advice for older, stable folks who want to reach back down the ladder and help others climb up.

What drives young people to leave home before 18?

I think our culture has two ideas of what a runaway looks like.

1. Lindsay, the little girl from the 1992 McDonald’s commercial, with a hobo pack of toys slung over her back, running away to McDonald Land because “evewybody says I’m too widdle!” (Don’t worry—Ronald McDonald guilt trips her about her goldfish starving, and she turns back at the end of the driveway!)
2. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, recklessly scorning an adequate home so he can more efficiently smoke cigarettes and race motorcycles. (Don’t worry—after some sobering violence, Jimmy realizes nonconformity is just gonna get you shot by trigger-happy police, and he also turns back at the end of the driveway!)

These aren’t helpful narratives that reflect a real phenomenon faced by 1 in every 15 minors.

It’s hard to leave home before 18. The world is not an easy, welcoming place to navigate, especially if you’re alone and unprepared. So if young people want to do it, it’s probably for excellent reasons. Among them: poverty, instability, abuse, neglect, addiction, incarceration, system involvement, and mental and physical health issues. Some are thrown out or kicked out in stark, dramatic fashion. Others are slowly, painfully squeezed out or frozen out. Still more are ignored, unsupported, or victimized to the point that the child must take the initiative to leave.

One of the most prevalent reasons teens become homeless is due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Compared to their straight cisgender peers, queer teens have a 120% higher risk of experiencing homelessness. I’ll reference to this demographic often.

Basically, if you tell me you need to go, I believe you. And I’ll tell you whatever I can to help you.

What are your legal options?

Please keep in mind while reading this that I am not a lawyer… though I have completed several Phoenix Wright Games. So. Overruled.

Your rights versus your guardians’ legal obligations

In most cases, a parent cannot legally abandon their minor child unless their child has been legally emancipated. Abandonment encompasses things like eviction, neglect, failure to financially support, and failure to reconnect or communicate.

If that minor child elects to leave home on their own, their parents are still legally obliged to provide financial support. It it still their fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the child, regardless of where that child lives.

Financial support must include necessities like food and housing—but it doesn’t extend to conditional expenses. Depending on the state, conditional expenses can include some pretty important stuff like cell phones, internet access, and college tuition.

Depending on local laws and the age of their child, parents have some recourse to force a reunion. Usually it involves calling the police. But police may only be able to compel the child to return home if they’re in an unsafe or unhealthy environment. From what I have read, most courts are reticent to intervene if the child is very close to their age of majority.

• Legal ages by state
• Child support guidelines by state
• Example of legal ambiguity for minors near the age of majority

Emancipation by court decree

Emancipation is a legal process that grants minor children the status of an independent adult legally responsible for their own care.

Despite what you may have heard, it is almost impossible for a minor child to be legally emancipated from their parents by court decree.

Let’s count hurdles. In most cases, for a child to be emancipated you need to find a lawyer (1). Now pay that lawyer (2) to go to court (3) to prove that you are in a better position than your guardians to provide for yourself (4). You’ll have to alreadbecy be living independently in your own place (5), with your own income (6), your own insurance (7), and a demonstrable record of maturity and good decision-making (8). Couch surfing or living informally with others while looking for employment will not cut it. And you’d better hope your parents aren’t fighting back with their own persuasive lawyers (9) and that you lucked out with a sympathetic judge (10).

Oh, and only half of states even have a special court procedure for emancipation.

If you’re a child with independent wealth (like income or an inheritance) and you have rock solid proof that your parents are frittering away that money, you may be able to swing emancipation. But for the average kid, it’s a source of false hope IMO.

“Just get emancipated” is dangerously naive advice, and I’m sick of seeing it everywhere.

There are some detailed overviews of the emancipation criteria courts look for in the text version of this article.

• Criteria for an emancipation ruling
• Helpful overview on emancipation for teens
• Some famous cases of emancipated minors

Automatic emancipation

Certain actions can trigger automatic emancipation. Waiting out the clock and reaching the age of majority is the easiest one. Others include getting married or joining the armed forces.

Please don’t get married or join the armed forces to get away from your parents unless you have tried absolutely every other option first. These are extraordinary commitments with ramifications that last much longer than your minority.

• Automatic emancipation triggers
• Marriage age requirements by state
• Military eligibility criteria

Are there alternative ways to leave home before 18, without legal emancipation?

As you can see, emancipation laws aren’t the robust set of protections they could be. It’s unfortunate but true: for many teenagers in untenable home situations, enduring until 18 is the most realistic solution. For most of human history, children have been the property of their parents. Youth rights still have a long way to go.

I know this isn’t the answer you want. But take heart. You can do strategic things to minimize your present unhappiness.

Commit yourself to school and extracurriculars

If you need to spend as little time at home as you can, throwing yourself into schoolwork or after school projects is an awesome way to do it. It strengthens the skills you’ll need as an adult and is a pretty unimpeachable alibi.

If there are adults you trust in your school, don’t be afraid to explicitly ask them to help you accomplish this. You don’t have to get into the details of why—just tell them you need work.

When I was sixteen, I handed a letter to my high school theatre director. I asked her point-blank to assign a role that would get myself and my baby brother (whose after-school care I was responsible for) out of the house as much as possible.

She never acknowledged the letter. But when the cast and crew list for Into the Woods went up, I was listed as the “production stage manager.” Curiously, that role had never existed before. It would require me to stay after school, every day, for 3-4 hours, sometimes more. My little brother sat quietly in the auditorium, drawing and doing his homework while I worked on the show. Eventually she devised a walk-on role for him as Snow White’s dwarf. He looked adorable in a pointed hat and string beard.

God bless you, Susan.

Maximize time spent outside your home

School is a great refuge for weekdays. But what about the weekends—or what if your school is part of the problem? It’s not your only option.

It’s hard to tell when you’re still living at home the incredible extent to which being physically inside a space influences your thinking. It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 30 or 65: walking into your childhood bedroom immediately makes you start thinking and acting like the person you were when you were a child.

Spending as much time as possible outside of that limiting physical space did wonders for my mental health. It reminded me that I was moving toward an autonomous future where I wouldn’t have to cope with these feelings of helplessness, isolation, secrecy, and shame.

Shout out to Becky, my high school girlfriend’s mom, who had an open door policy for me. I wouldn’t have made it without her!

Get a job

A part-time job can be an amazing escape. Working builds practical skills, introduces you to new people, makes you a more attractive candidate for colleges or other workplaces, gets you started making your own money, and gets you out of the house all at the same time.

Volunteer

Volunteering has a lot of the same benefits as working: you get out of the house, meet new people, practice skills, and build your resume. While you don’t get paid, volunteering is usually more flexible. Plus: helping out in the community is a fantastic way to get out of your own head.

Spend time with friends

Kinda goes without saying that friends are a vital lifeline in troubled times. If you’ve got good quality people in your life, this is the time to lean on them. Hanging out in other people’s parents’ basements, doing silly shit or nothing at all for hours and hours, will be a sweet, nostalgic memory when you’re older.

Listen to your auntie Lauren now. When you’re under an extraordinary amount of stress, you probably aren’t in the right mindset to be a fantastic friend. Remind yourself that your friends are also children. Try to have some restraint and discretion with how much you rely on them. If you appreciate the solace they give you, respect that it takes a toll on their emotional well-being. Give them space to rejuvenate by exploring all the other support avenues listed here.

“What if I don’t have friends?” Well, that’s a different problem for another day. If it makes you feel better, think of it this way: friends are great to have, but maintaining healthy relationships while going through personal trauma is really challenging. It’s pretty rare for people to maintain high school friendships into adulthood. It’s a turbulent time, and it won’t define you.

Pass time at your local library

Librarians are like glaciers: icy and indifferent most of their substance is hidden. Librarians—especially the librarians in charge of teen media and activities—have a keen awareness of social issues and a passion for addressing them with dignity and discretion.

Don’t fret that you’re overusing the library or there for “the wrong reasons.” You can sit and browse TikTok until closing time, every single day, if it’s helpful for you to do so. I promise your librarian isn’t judging you. If it looks like they are, it’s more likely they’re trying to tactfully think of even more ways to offer you help.

Make your room a refuge

If you have your own bedroom, do what you can to make it feel safe and welcoming. I spent Baby’s First Paycheck decking out my tiny bedroom with a fresh coat of paint, new curtains, a mini-fridge, a little TV… oh, and a heavy duty exterior lock. Nobody had the key but me. It helped.

Just a word of warning: living inside your bedroom can be a lot like living inside your own head. At the end of the day, bedrooms are for sleeping. Living inside a cave 23 hours a day is a great way to break into disordered sleep patterns, poor hygiene, and social anxiety. So be careful. Try to mix it up. Get some vitamin D and touch grass every now and then.

What if you really need to leave? Like, now?

For most people, toughing it out at home until you turn 18 is often the most realistic and workable strategy. But sometimes shit gets real and you just can’t make it to the finish line.

Maybe you’ve reached a crisis point and you need somewhere to go, even for just a few days. I think it’s wise to develop an emergency escape plan for yourself. Here are some ideas to consider.

Look up your local shelters now, and learn what services they offer

Shelters sound like a great idea, but I’m sorry to say they’re a stopgap at best. Regulations change based on your age, the shelter, and the state. Unfortunately, if you are a minor, many/most shelters can’t take you in without parental consent. This may include contact with the police.

If your options are a shelter or the street, please at least try the shelter. Due to these restrictions, they may not be your best option for housing. But they may have non-housing programs you could benefit from. For example, the transportation company Greyhound partners with shelters to offer free bus tickets to get at-risk kids to a safe location. Some shelters offer free counseling. You just don’t know what these places offer unless you research it.

• State Laws on Minor Consent for Housing and Related Service

Find friends or family you can trust

The more realistic option is to ask to crash with someone you know. Grandparents, aunts/uncles, older siblings, teachers, friends, and neighbors are all options.

This kind of arrangement is probably much more common than you realize. Lots of people lean on distantly related or unrelated adults during adolescence. I crashed for a year with my girlfriend’s mother, in a bedroom vacated by an older sibling away at college. My younger brother followed in my footsteps and spent most of high school living with a different friend’s family. It took me a while to learn that my mentor’s children weren’t family by blood, but former students she’d adopted out of difficult circumstances in their teenage years. Tons of people call someone “auntie” or “grandma” not because of a connection by birth, but because that’s the role they stepped into.

The hardest part of achieving this arrangement is summoning the courage to ask for help. A lot of children raised in abusive circumstances have learned to make themselves convenient as a coping mechanism. I was very reluctant to ask for help when I needed it. I hated the idea of putting others out, and I couldn’t imagine anyone agreeing to make my problem their problem.

Now that I’m an adult myself, I understand that one of the highest callings of adulthood is extending stability to someone who has none.

Don’t give up until you find at least one adult whom you can trust. Memorize their phone number.

It’s not all Trunchbulls out there; there’s some Miss Honeys too.

What can you do to prepare yourself for autonomy?

If you want to leave home before 18 with roughly the speed of a human cannonball, these steps will make you ready to fly, even if circumstances force you to wait. Occupy your mind with these missions until a bigger opportunity knocks.

Secure copies of difficult-to-replace documents

If you want to rent your own apartment, apply for your own insurance, get student loans, or travel, you will need documentation. For Americans, these include:

• Birth certificate
• Social security card
• Driver’s license
• State ID card
• Passport
• Insurance card

These documents can be replaced later. But the process is expensive, time-consuming, and as enjoyable as a root canal. Seriously, don’t leave home without them. These sorts of documents are absolutely essential for adult life.

Get your own money

No matter your age, money opens up new options. Earning your own money is a really smart move.

Unfortunately, if you are a minor in the care of your parents, it’s usually legal for them to withhold your paychecks. Depending on the state, they may even be legally entitled to keep any money you make for themselves.

Adding to this, most American banks won’t let minors open independent accounts. That’s because minors cannot enter into legal contracts on their own. So the most common setup is a joint account, which your parents could easily access and plunder at will. (This actually happened to a friend of Jess’s. He was well into his college years. His mother told him he “owed” her his pay, and she just… took it from their joint account.)

On top of all that, getting a credit card without a guardian’s cosignature is next to impossible.

If you’re able to open accounts that your parents can’t access, do so. But if that isn’t an option, it may be in your best interest to keep your money as cash and hide it somewhere no one will find it. But this is risky. If it’s discovered, or if you lose access to the hiding spot, you’re shit out of luck. You can also ask a trusted friend or adult to hold the money for you. Just choose very, very carefully.

• When Money is the Weapon: Understanding Intimate Partner Financial Abuse
• Use and Abuse of Joint Bank Accounts
• The Best PayPal Alternatives for Teenagers Under 18
• Secret Hiding Places You’ve Never Thought Of (great ideas for safe places to hide cash)

Take care of your health

Health insurance is incredibly important. So you need to do whatever you can to keep it. But it makes minimizing contact with your parents tricky.

I have tasted the indignity of telling my mother “You’ve ruined my life, leave me alone, also please let me know our policy group number at your earliest convenience.”

Truthfully, I tried to research if it’s even possible for a minor to sign up for their own health insurance plan on the open market. But I couldn’t find a definitive answer, because everything points back to minors being covered under their parents. (If you know more about this, please comment!) Americans under 19 who aren’t covered by a health insurance plan should be eligible for a variety of stopgaps such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). But you’d need your parents’ participation to sign up.

Assuming it is possible, parental medical consent remains a serious issue. Most procedures require parental consent or notification of at least one parent. If you want medical care your parents don’t agree with—like therapy, an abortion, or gender-affirming care—it’s within their legal power to deny it.

The best thing you can do is to minimize the amount of healthcare you’ll need. Address any long-term health needs while you’re still covered by your guardian’s plan.

• Schedule your annual appointment with a primary care physician
• Go to the dentist for regular cleanings, and get any cavities filled
• Get glasses, or enough contacts to last you through the Long Night
• Establish a plan for long-term birth control
• Get therapy, if possible
• Establish good physical and mental healthcare habits

Many of these can be done with no co-pay or a bitty baby co-pay of $10 or $20.

• Your Yearly Free Medical Care Checklist
• Our Master List of 100% Free Mental Health Self-Care Tactics
• Can I get birth control and other sexual health services without my parents finding out?
• How to Find a Therapist When Your Parents Won’t Help

Learn skills that will help you be independent

When I really wanted to leave home but couldn’t yet, I found solace in HGTV. Watching people set up their own homes was intoxicating. I fantasized about my imminent independence through the rich weirdos of House Hunters.

What I wish I’d done instead was practice adulting more. I left home with a strong opinion about grout colors—but only a dim idea of how to file income taxes.

So if you don’t know how to write checks, clean, cook for yourself, wash your own dishes, and do the laundry… learn now. It would’ve made my landing a lot softer!

• How the Hell Does One Laundry? Asking For a Friend.
• How the Hell Does One Wash Dishes? Asking For a Friend.
• How Do You Write and Cash Checks? Asking For a Friend.
• How to Shop for Groceries Like a Boss

General words of wisdom (and caution) before you go

Thus ends my practical, logistical advice! But let me leave you with a few kernels of emotional guidance.

Listen to your gut

Living under someone’s roof is an extension of great trust. You are in a vulnerable position, at a vulnerable age. In this world, there are total strangers who would selflessly help you—and there are people who are close to you who might try to take advantage of you in your hour of need.

You don’t need a better reason than a gut feeling to decline someone’s offer of help. This is true in all circumstances and at all times in your life.

In particular, pay attention to anyone who urges you to ramp up conflict with your parents or cut them out of your lives prematurely. That person may be trying to isolate you—a classic precursor to abuse. Don’t leave home without a well-calibrated bullshit detector. 

Learn to ignore bad advice

Sometimes adults who should help you instead let you down spectacularly.

“But they’re family! Family is the only thing that really matters! Give them time! They raised you! They’re just doing what they think is best for you! Forgiveness will set you free!” You’ll hear it all.

Please recognize that this isn’t real advice—it’s personal bias.

Some people find it seriously disturbing to consider the idea that a family could fail its members. Those people may try to reject your difficult story (“my parents threw me out of the house because I’m trans”) and try to replace it with a simpler, more acceptable one (“this dramatic teenager is going through a phase.”)

Don’t relinquish your truth to anyone. Especially not for lame reasons like preserving illusions. If the truth of what’s happening is inconvenient to your parents, it sounds like they should’ve acted differently! It’s not on you to make sense of what makes no sense.

Don’t give in to negativity

When times are hard, dark thoughts can creep into your mind and disrupt your optimism and good sense. Don’t let your present unhappiness color your perception of the world around you.

What you most need is help, and it’s hard to ask for it if you give in to the idea that you’re worthless and unloved in an unfeeling world. The world is still a bright and beautiful place. It’s still filled with people who are eager to meet you, know you, understand you, and help you.

• Text the word “SAFE” and your current location to 4HELP (44357) to ask A National Safe Place to connect you with the closest youth advocacy group.
• Call, text, or chat online with the Trevor Project, an organization that helps queer youths.
• Text “START” to 741-741 or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with The Jed Foundation, an organization that helps students cope with emotional problems.
• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
• Call 811 for mental health emergencies.
• Call 911 for physical emergencies and immediate intervention.

Remember that this too shall pass

Teens are often labeled as highly emotional, irrational, volatile, impulsive, shortsighted monsters. This is pretty fucking unfair. Everyone is different. Many people are wise and mature beyond their years—or foolish and immature despite them.

However, science suggests that teenage brains are still changing and developing. In fact, we now know that the brain doesn’t fully mature until age twenty-five.

Ask people in their thirties and forties about their teenage years, and almost everyone goes pale at the memory of how wild it felt. For me, everything felt incredibly intense. Every day brimmed with opportunity for catastrophic highs and lows. Aging sorts a lot of things out—like a warped funhouse mirror slowly straightening out into something trustworthy.

You’re not crazy. And you’re not wrong. But you are neurologically different than your parents—and different than you will be when you’re their age.

There are days you’ll feel excruciatingly anxious, depressed, lost, and misunderstood. But every day you age, your brain is reshaping itself to better handle the stresses of adult life. And every day, you’re one step closer to full legal autonomy.

It won’t always be like this—I promise. It really does get better. And even if it gets worse, you get better. More resilient, more rational, more understanding of long-term consequences, and more aware of your own power.

If all else fails, hang on for spite

Live today, so you can spit on some graves tomorrow.

I, Lelouche vi Brittania, am ordering you, Suzaku Kururugi, to live!

How can safe, stable adults help?

Jess and I have been writing BGR for almost a decade now. That means the readers who found us as high schoolers are now fully fledged adults themselves. They’ve shifted from asking how to get help to asking how to give help. Which is incredibly special and beautiful, and very much in the spirit of what we do here at Bitches Get Riches!

If you have some stability in your life, and you want to extend that stability to a young person in need, how do you do it? Uncharacteristically, I think a passive approach works best. (I’ve learned to be passive in this, investing, and… nothing else!)

The passive approach to help teens leave home before 18

To passively attract young people who need help, you basically have to do three things:

1. Be present and observant in your community.
2. Take every small opportunity to demonstrate your trustworthiness.
3. Resist the urge to get results quickly by pushing the person you’re trying to help.

The first two steps are easy and pleasant. The third step feels like American Ninja Warrior for my wheezing, anemic sense of patience. Like Sailor Moon, I love to right wrongs and triumph over evil—and I like to do it in under half an hour!

It’s so tempting to want to come roaring into a victimized person’s life in Mama Bear mode. Don’t do it. Lashing out hard at suspected abusive households is more about you burnishing your identity as A Good Person than it is about helping the victim of that abusive household. With much time and experience, I’ve learned that deescalation (and even inaction) are more often the tools to use when trying to help a legal minor.

Children raised in unsafe homes often learn to hide their struggles. They aren’t likely to ask acquaintances for help—let alone strangers—because they’ve learned not to expect adults to come through for them. Instead, they may expect negative outcomes like punishment or betrayal.

Imagine you see a feral cat living under a shed near your home. She’s young and pregnant, and cold weather is coming. You know she needs help. You can sprint after her, crate in hand, yelling “LET ME LOVE YOU!” But no matter how good your intentions are, that cat is gone! You get results by showing up everyday to feed her, talking to her softly, slowly acclimating her to your presence, until she trusts you enough to relax and allow you to scoop her up.

Why the passive approach works best

Imagine you have a teenage son and you’ve seen some subtle signs that his best friend Jeremy may be struggling at home. You’ve met his parents; they have a scary vibe. You can sit Jeremy down and ask him incredibly intimate questions like “Do you feel safe at home?” And that’s an important question to learn the answer to—but he’s much more likely to be honest with a trusted peer, like your son.

Start by talking to your son one-on-one. Explain your concerns about Jeremy, and encourage him to communicate his observations back to you. Emphasize you can be trusted not to do anything rash (like confront his parents or call the police) that may make Jeremy’s situation worse. Then create tons of space for the boys to spend time together. Offer them rides to activities or clubs. Feed him dinner afterward. Encourage him to sleep over. Let the sleepovers creep into whole weekends. Make sure he has your number saved in his phone.

One day, Jeremy may call you late in the evening and sheepishly ask to sleep over even though it’s a weeknight. If you say “of course you may,” congratulations. The cat has stepped into the carrier.

If you suspect abuse, don’t you have a duty to do more?

Every situation is unique and must be assessed in its totality. It’s an incredibly weighty decision to make—especially for a bystander who wants to do the right thing but doesn’t have access to all the facts.

If you suspect physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect, yes—you should call your state’s Child Protective Services (CPS) and make a report. That is The Right Thing To Do.

… But in this complicated world, The Right Thing To Do may not always be The Best Action To Take.

• Of the 4.2 million alleged child mistreatment cases in the United States, half are screened out immediately, with no further investigation or follow up.
• For those that proceed to an investigation, only 16% will be found to indeed be victims of abuse. That’s a very low number. Not because the reports turn out to be mostly wrong, but because shit has to be really bad for it to meet their legal standards for abuse.
• CPS keeps the overwhelming majority of those confirmed victims in the home where they were victimized. The families are put in an “alternative response” program that’s not too dissimilar from parole.
• Most reports come from police, followed by mandated reporters like teachers and social workers. These reports are given more weight in the screening process than reports from unrelated adults, which are viewed with a higher degree of skepticism.
• The best estimate I could find (it’s a very patchwork system, y’all) indicates that less than 5% of child abuse reports result in the child leaving their abusive home.

The takeaway is that the system is very oriented toward preserving parental rights. For this reason, I would put “call CPS” on the same level of rarely helpful advice as “file for emancipation.” It just isn’t that simple. An ill-considered CPS report could make the child’s situation worse.

Some states still accept anonymous CPS reports, but many do not. Whether the parents in question are abusive or not, CPS investigations are hugely stressful for families. If they know who made the report, expect them to retaliate at the very least by cutting off your access to their child. If they don’t know who made the report, they may lock down access to their child by “outsiders,” making them even more isolated. And they may covertly retaliate against the child instead.

I am not a social worker. I’m not even a parent! But I’ve worked with a lot of young people, including those in the foster care system. This is just my personal perspective. If you ever find yourself in this achingly difficult situation, please seek out voices and opinions beyond mine. Come to your own conclusions and take whatever course of action you think is best.

Are there any active strategies to help leave home before 18?

This passive strategy works really well for older people who naturally come into frequent contact with young adults: parents, teachers, coaches, volunteers, etc. But if you’re not in that position, how do you extend stability to young people who need it?

Well, I don’t think you should go out and search for vulnerable young people on your own. You may have a totally pure and good-hearted reason for seeking those people out. But it’s not safe for you and it’s not safe for them.

• Random strangers are not a safe housing choice for vulnerable minors. (Is this it? The single most obvious sentence I’ve ever typed??) Many survivors of youth homelessness have complicated stories of accepting shelter from “helpful” and even seemingly loving adults that developed into a sexual relationship they now feel conflicted about, or even victimized by. They were too naive or desperate to question why an unrelated adult might seek out unrestrained access to sad, lonely teens. This is especially common among queer kids, who may feel seen and valued as a sexual partner in their true orientation for the first time. It’s a really icky power imbalance for everyone, and I can’t recommend it as anything more than an absolute last resort.
• Random teenagers from troubled backgrounds cannot be relied upon to be safe either. I know a couple who opened their home to a troubled 16 year old. It went okay for a while. But once he came of age, tension started to build as he refused to take steps to become independent. He didn’t respect their pretty minimal house rules. He took drugs under their roof. When they asked him to sit down and make a plan with them, he put his fist through their wall. Although he eventually left, their home was later burglarized. No one forced entry; the burglar had a key.

These situations are extremes. I’m sure they’re uncomfortable to consider, but I believe they’re a necessary part of the conversation. I choose to believe that most people are trustworthy. But you shouldn’t put yourself at unnecessary risk. Charity demands boundaries, for both the giver and the receiver.

With that in mind, here are my suggestions.

• Think long and hard about what it means to be a helper versus a savior. A lot of people experience abuse in childhood and want to heal their inner child by nurturing others. That’s beautiful—and it doesn’t work. You must heal your own hurts; it is terribly unfair to yourself and others to try to triangulate healing through someone else. Don’t seek out opportunities to act like a savior, then blindly jump in with both feet. (I have done this, and let me tell you, my feet got QUITE WET!) Please know how to love yourself before you make somebody else need you.
• Build your presence in your community. My house is near a high school, so I see the same teens walk by all the time, though they usually don’t see me. Once, during a torrential rainstorm, I was just pulling out of the driveway when I saw two of them, holding sopping hoodies over their heads and exhausted from trying to sprint through the downpour. “Do you want to jump in?” I yelled out the window. “I’ll take you wherever you’re going!” I could see in their faces that they desperately wanted to accept—I swear they almost did—but ultimately, they politely declined, and jogged off through the sheets of cold rain. I think about this interaction often when I think about community. Because I bet if I’d said hello to them even once before that day, they would’ve accepted the help I was eager to give. So if you want to help others, talk to the people around you. Become a great neighbor. Get involved with hobbies and volunteering opportunities that let you meet the people you already live alongside. We live increasingly isolated lives. I just told y’all not to trust strangers—so don’t be strangers! Earn trust in the context of all the things your community shares.
• Offer help through existing formalized systems. If you want to open your home to a homeless youth, our foster care system is overflowing with teens. (As a demographic, they simply aren’t wanted, even by their own extended families. Which is fucking heartbreaking.) If that feels too intimidating, start slow as a respite/short-term foster home. Many major cities have community-run youth shelters, and I guarantee they all need volunteers. By following an established process, you get resources and support, and the minor gets standards and oversight. If you suck at setting boundaries, make existing institutions set them for you!
• Really listen to the people you’re trying to help. Safe independence is the ultimate goal. There’s a limitless number of creative ways you can help a young person work towards that. Once you find someone you want to help, talk to them about what they actually need. Giving them money, a job, or job skills may be even better than providing housing. Even coordinating “holding” money for a teen that their parents can’t access would be a huge help to many. Just talking and listening may give someone the strength to reach the finish line of legal adulthood.

If you can’t help, at least do no harm

One of the last steps I take when I’m finalizing an article like this is citing my sources. (I know it doesn’t seem like a BLOG called BITCHES GET RICHES is likely to be rigorous and science-based! But hold us up to the light, and we *sparkle* with journalistic excellence. Jess even has a whole-ass degree in journalism!)

Curiously, several of the sources I collected on youth homelessness vanished right before I could hit “publish.” Studies and surveys I had in open tabs disappeared overnight. Half the links I bookmarked turned into 404 errors.

That’s because the research was funded and hosted by our government. You know: the thing that exists to represent us. Right now, this regime is mass-deleting that hard-won research. (Which, I must point out, is theft. That data belonged to you and I. It was funded by us taxpayers. And it’s gone now.) They’re doing this because it lays the groundwork to isolate and vilify their opposition, erode our rights, destroy our social safety net, tank our expectations of what an elected government can do for its people, and plunder its coffers to feed their bottomless, psychopathic greed.

Somewhere in America tonight, there’s a girl slipping quietly out the back door of her home because her mom’s boyfriend is drunk, and she knows what’ll happen if she stays. There’s a boy sleeping on the floor of a room with no door on its hinges, because his parents caught him looking at gay porn. There are kids waiting for a bus that won’t come until dawn, because the cold and the dark scares them less than whatever’s inside their own homes. Their suffering isn’t erased, just the inconvenient proof of their experiences.

If you can’t help these kids, the least you can do is not harm them. This political movement is trying to erase their stories, destroy their support, and devour their hope for happiness in adulthood. If you aren’t resisting it, you’re accepting it.

We need your help, too

A stroll down traumatic memory lane, while making unbroken eye-contact with the rise of fascism in my country? Woo-wee, sorry to hog all the fun for myself!

(In all seriousness, I’m fine. I will immerse myself in a healing bath of Stardew Valley for 48 hours, and emerge steaming, gleaming, and more powerful than ever.)

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