Mr./Ms President of the United States                                                                                                           1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.                                                                                                       Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr./Ms. President

In large cities today there are people sleeping on the streets, there are also kids in our home towns that don’t have a place to call home. Some problems related to this issue are students who cannot afford housing and pay for classes, and foster children that are not succeeding after they age out of foster care. We need to take action to fix these issues because if we don’t, more kids will be set up for failure.

Firstly, some students who are paying for college classes struggle to pay for housing at the same time. There are programs that provide free housing, but some of the kids who need the housing don’t fit the requirements needed, so they are forced to drop out of college. Aquisha Porter is a 23 year old who gets affordable housing from a non profit organization because she moved out of her parents house when she was 16. She is like many students that are taking college classes but she is provided housing. Many of the other students cannot qualify for federal housing because there are extra rules if you are a student. A solution to this problem would be to discuss requirements and come up with a way to allow more students to qualify to get affordable housing on college campuses.

Secondly, not enough foster children are getting the support they need to succeed once they age out of foster care. Studies have shown that 60 percent of the young men who age out of foster care are convicted of a crime by their mid-twenties. Also, kids that age out of the foster system are more likely to end up on the streets than the ones who find a family. A reasonable approach to this issue would be to set higher regulations for foster homes that will push their kids to do better in school and that will also increase their chances of finding a family that can support their needs.

Lastly, not all kids do bad one their own. A boy named Logan Hofkamp never got along with his parents, so he emancipated from them when he was 16. He then got his own apartment and is doing well on his own today. This goes to show that some kids are responsible enough to live on their own before they turn 18, and that not all of them struggle without the support of adults.

In conclusion, there are many kids today that need more affordable housing, and a lot of kids are not getting enough support from the foster care systems for them to succeed. Solutions would be to make new requirements to allow more kids to qualify for free/more affordable housing on college campuses, and to set higher regulations for foster homes that will push their kids to do better in school so that they can have a better future. Also some kids are responsible enough to live on their own before they’re eighteen, so not all of the kids that don’t get support from adults are failures.

Sincerely yours,

Nathan