Volunteers determine number of homeless youths

LYNN – Twinkle lights, the promise of pizza and a place to get warm lured in more than a dozen young adults to The Haven Project Thursday within the first hour of the city and the state’s first ever youth count.”It’s awesome because some of these kids we’ve never met,” said Haven’s Program Director Gini Mazman.The three-day youth count, initiated and paid for by the Department of Housing and Community Development, will wrap tonight. The goal is to determine just how many homeless young adults, ages 16-24, are living on the street. Volunteers from nearly three dozen agencies across the city including the Lynn Shelter Association, which is spearheading both the youth count and the annual Point in Time count of the adult homeless population, are making it a true community effort.Louisanna Bunifacio, 19, is one who has been counted. She has been on her own since she was 13 and considers herself lucky because she met Deborah Barnard, a school department nurse and homeless liaison, who “helped me so much I can’t even say.”Bunifacio earned her high school equivalency while living on her own and working to pay rent. She said she is currently living in the shelter but said she is close to getting her own place.”It’s awful but I can cope with it,” she said.But she came to Haven Thursday to give back. Acting as a hostess, she and Carol Valle, 21 and homeless since she was 17, handed out pizza and drinks, passed cupcakes and made their peers from the streets feel welcome.Jeremy LeBlanc, 24, came with a friend. Born and raised in Lynn, LeBlanc said he made some bad choices that included getting involved with drugs, dropping out of school and hitting rock bottom a few times before he turned the corner.At one time he worked two jobs but after losing both he started selling drugs and before long he was using more than he was selling, he said.”I never thought I’d use a needle but I did,” he said.Clean and sober now, LeBlanc said he has a sponsor, goes to meetings, has his high school equivalency and doesn’t want to go back to the life he had.”I just want a normal life,” he said.Kileen Burke is a case manager with Straight Ahead Ministries, which is one of several local agencies helping with the count, and works with young men like LeBlanc all the time. Eighty percent to 90 percent of the young adults she works with are homeless but it’s not always easy to tell, she said.”They’re not all in the shelter because there is a stigma attached,” she said.For those who can stick it out, however, she said the shelter is a path to getting off the street because they will help the kids find housing, which is not easy.”I’m 23 and I work full time, and if I didn’t have two roommates I couldn’t afford it,” she said.Burke wondered if a youth shelter, like the one they have in Somerville, might work in Lynn.”If, like the adult shelter, it was a path out it might work,” she said.She said it’s frustrating to know that if a homeless girl has a child or a kid has a substance abuse problem they can find shelter but if you’re just an unaccompanied kid there are few resources.”They are the underserved population,” she said.Travis Alpert knows that well. He is the poster boy for homeless youth, literally, it is his hooded figure on the posters advertising the youth count. He has been in and out of foster homes and in and out of his mother’s home from the time he was 18 months old until he was 18 years old. Now 24, Alpert may not be financially stable or have a place to live but he is grounded in a way many his age are not.When asked about his mother he said simply and without rancor, she could not provide for herself so she couldn’t provide for him. Alpert said his father wasn’t much of a presence in his life but did pass on one thing that has helped him, a love of music. It has become his passion, along with ministry. He found the Haven Project through his church, he’s in college and he’s giving back by volunteering with the count.”I try to give back when I can,” he