What makes PERIS Hill, PERIS Hill?

PERIS Hill is neither accidental nor mystical: it is a deliberately crafted model brought about by research, thoughtful design, and a willingness to try something new. An experiment of sorts, whose material structures only function when grounded in clear principles, sustained relationships, and shared accountability. More than a housing development, PERIS Hill was conceived as an intervention in a pattern: the well-documented pipeline from foster care to housing instability and homelessness. Its design reflects a deliberate refusal to treat housing as either a reward for compliance or a stand-in for care. 

As we approach our 5th anniversary and the release of a five year case study, it has become apparent that what we have created is less a rigid formula and more a living system - shaped by context, relationships, and time. A model that lives and works in balance - where the structural, quantifiable approaches to support and housing and the less structural, more human efforts it takes to execute on them are equally important. A model that relies on a core number of key approaches and innovations to give it form, strength, flexibility, and resilience - approaches that, if singularly or collectively absent, would weaken the model and diminish impact. 

• Funding

At a time when funding for supportive housing, a proven homelessness prevention and response strategy, is at risk, a key innovation at PERIS Hill is the Graves Foundation’s ten year commitment to fully fund onsite support services for youth residents. The Graves Foundation is a family foundation focused on improving the lives of youth by supporting education, community building, housing, and youth development. Their commitment to youth, specifically foster youth, drove the Graves Foundation to create an effective housing solution for fosters as they age out of care. They conducted a national research scan, and it was clear that onsite support services were both key to youth housing stability and chronically underfunded. Graves knew it was essential to ensure services at PERIS Hill through sufficient and consistent funding.

Because of their support for services and the stability it provides both residents and staff at PERIS Hill, PERIS Foundation has the capacity to concentrate its fundraising efforts on gathering the additional resources required to maintain the physical building, offer additional programming, pursue its mission and create solutions beyond (and sometimes despite) many of the entrenched barriers that can lead to housing instability and homelessness for former foster youth.

• Focus on Foster Youth

Young people aging out of foster care face some of the highest risks of housing instability and homelessness in the United States - not as a result of individual failure but because of systemic conditions that make accessing stability extraordinarily difficult during the transition. For many, leaving foster care coincides with the abrupt withdrawal of structure, relationships, and support. These challenges are compounded by an underfunded and sometimes deeply fragmented housing and service landscape that often doesn’t allow specific focus on foster youth. PERIS Hill emerged in response to this reality: a recognition that shifting the trajectory of young people exiting foster care requires more than housing units or services alone. It demands an environment that treats stability, dignity, and relationship as foundational conditions—not as rewards to be earned through compliance or offered in reaction to crisis.

• Preventative Intervention

Common barriers found in other housing models—such as parenting bans, rental history requirements, sobriety mandates, or access to housing referrals only after homelessness has become the reality—are intentionally absent from PERIS Hill. Rather than relying on homelessness response referrals through Coordinated Entry, the model relies instead on direct referrals from youth serving organizations before young people become homeless, working under the assumption that providing stable housing earlier – before crisis – reduces long-term harm and supports healthier transitions to adulthood. This approach shapes nearly every downstream design element. By accepting youth earlier in their trajectories, PERIS Hill reflects a new model of true intervention—creating space for long-term stability rather than episodic relief.

• Intentional Onsite Services

The PERIS Hill approach centers on embedding support into the daily rhythms of the community. With a staff-to-youth ratio of approximately 1:6, the model allows staff to form meaningful relationships, respond to individualized needs, and to maintain a consistent, anchoring presence. This constant proximity also allows staff to build trust, respond in real time to crises or concerns, and offer support through informal conversations and structured programming alike. The approach challenges models of service delivery that rely on compliance and case management by prioritizing relationships and demonstrating the transformative potential of responsiveness with shared accountability.

• Community Connection

One defining conceptual approach to the PERIS Hill model is the prioritization of community integration. Rather than creating a building and community exclusively for former foster youth, PERIS Hill is designed and operates as a mixed-income, mixed-experience community. This approach reflects a belief that for young people aging out of foster care community integration—when done thoughtfully— reduces stigma, supports social connection, and helps avoid the isolating dynamics that can emerge in single-population housing. 

• Youth Experience

PERIS Hill intentionally centers racial equity and cultural responsiveness, recognizing that Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ youth are disproportionately impacted by foster care involvement and homelessness. Youth are positioned as co-designers and bring lived experience of systems that often surveil, exclude, or harm. Their insights shape decisions about safety, autonomy, and belonging, influencing everything from the building’s physical design and furnishings to community norms, rules, and the structure of supportive services. Their involvement also reflects an awareness of how housing designed for former fosters can sometimes feel institutional and isolating and correlates directly with PERIS Hill deliberately rejecting design features and program requirements that mirror the surveillance and restriction many youth are trying to leave behind.

• Learning and Adaptation

PERIS Hill was designed with a long-term evaluation lens, engaging in an iterative cycle that allows evolution through continuous learning, rather than one-time assessment. Youth voice, qualitative insight, and reflective practice are treated as core data sources, not as supplementary feedback. This orientation positions evaluation as a tool for sensemaking and adaptation, rather than accountability alone. Learning and adaptation are integrated into daily operations with staff, youth, and partners participating in reflective practices that surface real-time insights, support iteration, and foster accountability to values rather than just outcomes. 

Summary

Five years has taught us a lot. We’ve learned how difficult it can be to take an aspirational vision and turn it into an operational reality. How well intentioned actions can sometimes result in unintended harm. And how truly transformative available and trusted support can be to foster youth navigating their transition to adulthood.

The most important thing we’ve learned, however, is that the foundational approaches outlined above are essential for the successful design and provision of the form of deeply affordable supportive housing imagined by PERIS Hill. Individually, the approaches seem simple enough and aren’t all that novel. But taken together, they form an innovative, coherent, replicable model: integrated, preventative, supportive housing for foster youth without crisis requirements; relationship-centered, fully funded, well-staffed on-site support; youth guided design; and an explicit commitment to learning and adaptation. The PERIS Hill model. A living system intentionally designed to grow, adapt, and mature in parallel with the foster youth that call it home.

Written by Carla Godwin - Director | PERIS Foundation and Dr. Nora Murphy Johnson - Evaluator | ALAE Collective