Young people aging out of foster care face some of the highest risks of housing instability and homelessness in the United States. Across studies, between one-third and nearly half of youth who age out of foster care will experience homelessness by their mid-twenties, a rate many times higher than their peers. This instability is not episodic—it is patterned and persistent. Youth with out-of-home placement histories experience homelessness earlier, more frequently, and for longer durations than their peers. They also show disproportionate rates of involvement with the criminal legal system, early parenting, mental health challenges, and underemployment. Not as a result of individual failure, but clearly as a reflection of conditions (both systematic and situational) that make sustained stability extraordinarily difficult during their transition to adulthood.

PERIS Hill will soon celebrate its fifth anniversary. A celebration that will coincide with the release of a five-year case study that attempts to document how PERIS Hill was conceived, built, and refined in practice. Even in draft form, the case study already clearly identifies something that has become increasingly apparent over the last few years: what we have created in PERIS Hill is less a rigid formula, and more a living system. A model that at its core, relies on the presence of a number of foundational approaches for form, strength, flexibility and resilience. Simple, easily articulated approaches that, when taken together, form something innovative, coherent, and (importantly) replicable.