A $5 million state funding commitment is set to help a San Bernardino nonprofit build an apartment complex on vacant land at Patton State Hospital and launch a youth center aimed at young people experiencing homelessness. The money is also expected to support transitional housing created by renovating vacant homes across the city, part of a broader push to address a crisis that county data shows affects tens of thousands of local students.
California Assemblymember James C. Ramos presented the $5 million commitment to Family Assistance Program, according to IE Community News. The local nonprofit plans to use the funding for housing and support services across the region, the outlet reports, including an apartment complex on vacant land at Patton State Hospital and a partnership with the City of San Bernardino to turn vacant houses into transitional housing. Ramos said the region should prioritize unhoused youth and provide resources so they can pursue their dreams, per the same account.
Darryl Evey, CEO and executive director of Family Assistance Program, said the nonprofit expects the funding to arrive in December or January, and that the planned youth center is expected to be fully operational by May 2027. Evey said helping young people avoid homelessness and plan for their future can address homelessness more broadly, according to the report.
Pooling Nonprofits Under One Roof
The youth center is planned to bring together nonprofits serving young people under a single roof, giving them access to job assistance, career training, and substance-use services, the station's report notes. Evey said roughly 10 organizations serving young people in San Bernardino currently pay about $50,000 a month in rent combined, and that a shared center could redirect that spending toward direct services instead. He added that children should not have to worry about where they will eat or sleep, per the same account.
Family Assistance Program already runs a range of services for young people. Boyd described the organization as providing tutoring, counseling referrals, and help obtaining identification, driver permits and licenses, according to IE Community News. It also operates Open Arms, a youth community resource center in San Bernardino serving young people ages 14 to 24 with free 24/7 emergency services for youth and their families at no charge.
A Client Who Found Housing in Days
The stakes behind the funding push are personal for LaRieya Boyd, now a case manager at Family Assistance Program and a former client of the organization. IE Community News reports that the nonprofit helped Boyd secure housing in less than a week after her adoptive parents required her to leave home at 18. Boyd described Family Assistance Program as an opportunity for housing and other supports, and said she has learned to forgive and now looks forward to the future, per the outlet.
The Scale of Youth Homelessness Locally and Statewide
The need extends well beyond any single client's story. San Bernardino County identified 28,164 K-12 students as homeless or lacking secure housing during the 2024-25 school year, representing 7% of total enrollment, according to a county community indicators report. The seed reporting also states that 88% of those students shared housing with other families because of economic hardship that same school year.
The county's numbers reflect a larger statewide pattern. Nearly 300,000 California K-12 students experienced homelessness in the 2024-25 school year, a new statewide high and a 10% increase from before the pandemic, according to the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. The center's research also found that Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students are affected at the highest rates, that Northern California and the Central Coast contain most of the 10 counties with the highest rates of students experiencing homelessness, and that Southern California has school districts with the highest counts.
Existing Projects Point to What's Possible
Family Assistance Program has already built toward solutions elsewhere in the region. The nonprofit says it runs three transitional housing programs for transitional-age youth and two youth drop-in centers, and that an expansion of its youth drop-in and community center in Old Town Victorville will add 20 emergency-shelter beds, a commercial kitchen, and 14 tiny homes for transitional-age youth experiencing homelessness, according to its tiny-home village program page. That Victorville effort received $1 million donated from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, the organization says.
County officials have separately pointed to other housing efforts for homeless youth in the region. San Bernardino County, in partnership with Family Assistance Program, has been reported to be working to construct 22 interim housing units to serve homeless youth after receiving a $5.8 million award from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, according to a San Bernardino County announcement. Separately, a 2023 press release from Assemblymember Ramos's office described legislation, AB 349, that would authorize state agencies to lease a building at Patton State Hospital to a nonprofit corporation or local government to provide housing and mental health services for unsheltered people — the kind of authority that could underpin the apartment complex now being planned at the same site.
