Daley Family Foundation Supports Ending Youth Homelessness

Daley Family Foundation Supports Ending Youth Homelessness

Lighthouse Youth & Family Services receives leadership gift toward grant match

Lighthouse Youth & Family Services is pleased to announce it has received a $70,000 grant from the Daley Family Foundation. These funds will support the plan to end youth homelessness in Cincinnati, KEYS to a Future without Youth Homelessness (KEYS). 

Lighthouse is the lead agency for KEYS, a community effort to create an innovative system that ensures all young people ages 18-24 have access to safe, affordable, and stable housing. The KEYS plan was developed after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) selected Cincinnati/Hamilton County in January 2017 to receive $3.8 million in funding for HUD’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program. Strategies to End Homelessness and Lighthouse worked with a broad array of partners to create the plan, relying specifically on the ideas and recommendations provided by young people who experienced homelessness.

The KEYS plan is designed to:

  • Reduce the percentage of young people who become homeless by over 50% by 2020.
  • Reduce the average length of homeless episodes from 38 days to 21 days by 2020.
  • Increase the percentage of young people who become permanently housed after leaving shelter to 80% by 2020.

The overarching goal of the KEYS plan is to prevent homelessness before it occurs.

To receive the full amount of federal funding, Lighthouse must match 20% of the total program costs for KEYS. It’s an amount equaling almost $700,000. The generous leadership gift from the Daley Family Foundation will go toward the required match.

The Daley Family Foundation first showed interest in Lighthouse’s work toward ending youth homelessness when it supported the building of the new Sheakley Center for Youth shelter and housing complex in 2017. Through this recent gift toward KEYS, the Daley Family Foundation is furthering its commitment to homeless youth and helping them achieve positive outcomes. Foundation President Clayt Daley explained, “Recognizing the importance for all youth to have a safe place to call home, we are excited that the KEYS project will not only help local youth experience this security, but it will also track the effectiveness of the various strategies being employed, to further enhance the success of this community-wide effort.”

Anyone who would like to know more about how to support the work to end youth homelessness in Cincinnati can contact Vice President, Development and Grants, Jessica Wabler at 513-487-7101 or jwabler@lys.org.