Opinion: In rich Silicon Valley, a former foster child dies homeless 

How does a young man - full of life, a beautiful smile and a deep compassion for others - end up dying tragically at age 24, lonely, jobless and homeless?

Carl Wiseman, who entered the child welfare system at 4 years old, became like many of the 20,000 teenagers leaving foster care each year in our Nation: Abandoned to the streets at age 18 or 20 with the nonsensical expectation of miraculously surviving the path to adulthood with no support or stable family connection.

Every day in our nation we continue producing the fastest growing homeless population in our society, youth aging out of the foster care system.

It’s a travesty that we remove these children from neglectful homes only to raise them in an underfunded, dysfunctional biased system. While the hope is they will become productive citizens most of these children end up populating our adult prisons. 

Carl’s life exemplified that reality. I met Carl when he was 10 years old as a bi-racial foster child coming to church with “Mother Francis,” a local woman who is a saint to many needy children. Carl was sweet and energetic - a typical kid running up and down the aisles. However, like many foster children bouncing from home to home and school to school, Carl had a burning desire to be loved, wanted, and with his family. Both of Carl’s parents had died – his father in prison and his mother of AIDS – and the result was trauma and loneliness. 

At 14, Carl came to a program I operated, having gone from the child welfare system to the juvenile justice system; an all-too-common path for many foster youths. During Carl’s stay with us, he was able to stabilize and graduate from high school. At 18, he elected to move to another state to live with his cousins in hopes of filling the emptiness of a family connection. Unfortunately, that move was unsuccessful, and eight months later he returned to our town homeless.

Carl began his journey to adulthood bouncing between homeless shelters and the County Jail. By age 21, he was too old to receive foster care services and slept in his car, the park, our front lobby, and the shelters, all while attempting to find a job and some sense of his own personal self-worth and trauma. 

Sadly, on Oct. 11, after contracting pneumonia, he ended up in a coma on life support. After nearly three weeks, Carl died of congestive heart failure. While we struggled to care for Carl in life, after his death an extraordinary community effort led to his burial. In less than a week, $4,000 was raised for funeral costs through contributions from county social services staff, foundations, non-profit agencies and his former church. 

Nearly 50 people attended his service, including many youth who shared Carl’s circumstances. One young person told the gathering: “I came from the gutter and that’s all I know, but Carl inspired me and I’m going try to get out.”

This was a preventable tragedy because if we as a community were able to raise $4,000 dollars in five days to bury Carl, imagine if we had that same amount to pay his rent for a year. In from the cold treacherous streets, Carl could well have been with us today so let’s be intentional to ensure no young person leaves foster care to homelessness.