On Our Own
Apartment programs let teens try out living on their own before they leave care.

By Natalie Kozakiewicz

Barbara Moore, a 19-year-old New York City chick, lives it up in her own apartment in Harlem, which she shares with a roommate. Last time I visited, Barbara and her roommate were just chillin’, eating KFC, and Barbara was rocking tight striped pants and braids. She was talking about what it was like to live in her own apartment for the first time.

Her apartment is hooked up real nice. She has cable, a phone she shares with her roommate, and rapper pics all over her bedroom. The apartment has shiny hardwood floors, big rooms and freshly painted walls.

Barbara’s life isn’t bad either. She has a job working with 4th grade kids and she is also attending a college where she can get both her G.E.D. and a degree the same time—holla! Basically Barbara’s trying to do her thing. She’s only 19 but is becoming an independent woman.

But did you know she is one of us? I mean, Barbara is in foster care. She is part of a housing program called SILP, which stands for Supervised Independent Living Program.

Real Apartments, Real Life Experience

SILP is a national program, but sometimes it has different names in different agencies and states. It is designed to help prepare teens in care to live on their own by putting them in their own apartments.

By living on their own with a roommate, teens in SILP apartments learn important skills before they age out of care, like how to cook meals (or pick up KFC), do their own laundry, and shopping, and get along with their neighbors. If they need help or run into trouble, because they’re still in foster care a social worker will come to their rescue.

The Support of a Social Worker

There are often conditions for living in a SLIP, such as being 18, and having a job or attending school. Teens often share their SILP apartment with another person in the program. They get to meet their roommate ahead of time, to see if they basically get along.

A social worker checks up on them in their apartment from time to time, and they still attend independent living classes. There are general rules teens in SILP must follow, like they still have a curfew and they can’t have family, friends, or a boyfriend or girlfriend live in the apartment. If they can’t really manage the responsibilities of living alone—like if they go wild and have too many loud parties and the landlord complains (that happened to Barbara once)—they can be sent back to a group home or foster home.

The SILP program began when people realized that independent living classes alone can’t truly prepare teens to live on their own. It’s hard to learn skills like cooking or shopping in a classroom. So someone got the bright idea to put teens in their own apartments, where they would get actual experience living on their own. If they needed help, their social worker could lend a hand.

But there aren’t a lot of SILP apartments, so not everyone in foster care gets to do it. Being in SILP is a privilege, said Raqueil Shelton, Barbara’s social worker. Shelton said they pick the teens they can trust the most to live alone without getting in trouble.

Barbara was one of those teens who proved herself responsible. She changed a lot during her last few years in group homes and foster homes. She stopped partying as much, she was going to school regularly, and in the group home she kept to herself instead of getting into all the drama. So Shelton let Barbara join SILP.

Drive-by Supervision?

Barbara’s glad. She really likes living in her own apartment and plans to stay there until she ages out of foster care.

The best thing about living in SILP, Barbara said, is that she gets to be herself—she can come home and relax and eat when she wants to. She also gets privacy, which is hard to come by in a foster or group home. She feels good knowing that if something goes wrong, like if she doesn’t follow the rules, she doesn’t become homeless. She will just go back to a foster home.

But it’s not all easy. She got in trouble with the landlord once because her friends were smoking in the hallway and being loud. Also, she sometimes has trouble paying the phone bill, and finds herself feeling lonely from time to time. Not everyone agrees it is a good idea to put teens in care in their own apartments. Some people say the program gives teens a false idea of what it means to be independent. After all, in a SILP apartment your rent is paid for and you receive money for food. That doesn’t happen when you’re truly on your own.

For the most part, the teens I talked to who did SILP found it useful. Before he left care, Lenny Jones lived in an apartment like Barbara’s, with a roommate from his agency. Like with Barbara, the other people in Lenny’s building were not in foster care. Lenny and his roommate had to cook and do everything for themselves. “In the group home you never wanted to learn how they made that nasty food, so I definitely didn’t learn how to cook it there,” said Lenny.

For the most part, Lenny liked living in SILP. His only problem was adjusting to his first roommate, who was very different from him.

‘Get Help While You Can’

But even with experience living in a SILP apartment, when Lenny first left care, he struggled. He had to sleep on a friend’s couch for months when he decided to leave his college dorm. Eventually he found an apartment, which he shares with a roommate. Lenny said that it’s good to live on your own, but it’s also good to have a roommate there too. Not only does it cut the rent in half, said Lenny, but “there is always people there to chill with. And in case you slip in the tub, fall on the floor and die, someone will open the door and find your body.” He’s joking, I hope. Princess Carr had her share of troubles, too. Though she lived in a transitional apartment where she learned a lot of independent living skills, she eventually ran away from it. And after leaving foster care, she was homeless for a while.

“When you’re a teenager and you’re going through growing pains and you’re in a good situation,” said Princess, “you still always think you could do better. You always think that whatever situation you’re in that they’re not treating you right. You think, ‘I’m grown. I should get this. I should get that.’ And you don’t see it for what it really is: help.” Princess’ advice to teens preparing to live on their own is to accept help when it’s offered. That’s what teens living in SILP apartments are trying to do. Hopefully, it’ll teach them how to better help themselves when they’re out on their own.

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