An Inspiring Woman on a Mission – Kathy Tillotson

While attempting to find some volunteer opportunities after moving to Orange County, California, Kathy Tillotson found a big hole in the societal safety net. She discovered there was very little assistance available for homeless young adults between the ages of 18 and 24.

Technically, they weren’t minors, who could be put in foster housing. But they weren’t self-sufficient adults either. Either they were thrown out of their homes or they ran away, trying to escape physical, emotional or sexual abuse. (And let’s just think about that for a second. You are 18 or 20 years old and things are so bad that living on the streets seems a better option than staying at home.) And as these young adults typically weren’t addicts or mentally ill or in trouble with the law (yet), they had no access to legal or health services, which do not exist to help young adults unless they have been jailed.

Mostly, they drifted, invisible to the powers that be.

Kathy Tillotson saw them. Then she did something about their plight by starting her own nonprofit, Build Futures. 

Since it began in 2009, Build Futures has helped more than 1,500 homeless young adults in Orange County. The first goal is to find clients a place to stay within 24 hours of contacting Build Futures or being referred to them by social services or other organizations. But that’s only the first step.

Kathy took her professional skills (an MBA in information systems and years of working with clients like NASA and the US Navy) and her team of volunteers and committed to transforming these lives.

She developed a 21-step program to take them from the streets to self-sufficiency in roughly 90 days. It includes making sure clients get a phone (more on that later) and access to transportation; helping them obtain their social security cards, birth certificates and other IDs, which are essential when trying to land a job; assisting them in securing medical care (including mental health services if necessary); starting a bank account and providing some financial literacy training; and offering mentorships as they develop work skills and find a job.

Constant communication is also a hallmark of the program. Remember those phones the Build Futures clients get? Part of that is because clients are expected to keep in touch by text or phone call every day from the time they are placed in a home until they get a job, and then once a week after that. This means Kathy can get about 5,000 text messages in a month.

The program is amazingly effective. Kathy estimates about 75 percent of clients achieve self-sufficiency and those who drop out can always re-apply. And the return on investment from donors is pretty awesome as well; the average cost of transforming someone from homelessness to a stable environment and a job costs less than $2,000. Compare this to the cost of incarcerating someone in Orange County for a week ($980) or the estimated cost of a homeless person in Orange County each year (about $45,000). 

“These youth are our future; if we do not house them they will become the chronically homeless, criminals, drug dealers, and single mothers on Cash Aid because we have given them no other options and they have lost hope.” Tillotson wrote in the Huffington Post last year. “We just need to commit to housing the homeless youth across the country and connecting them to training and employment. The result is contributing members of our community. We know what to do to end youth homelessness, we just need to do it.”

Kathy is making it easy for communities that want to follow her example. Part of the reason she developed the 21-point plan from homelessness to self-sufficiency was so that other communities could replicate what she’s been doing in southern California for the past eight years.

Please join me in honoring the leadership and life changing work of Kathy Tillotson; a truly inspiring Woman on a Mission.

Learn more about Build Futures here.

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