A Beacon of Hope

Fourteen-year-old Tanya Ocampo found herself struggling with challenges at her home in Maltby. She approached her school counselor, who offered a business card for a Cocoon House teen advocate. When an incident with her older sister turned violent, she called the advocate, who quickly came to help.

Ocampo was one of many youth and young adults living at Cocoon House, an Everett-based nonprofit founded in 1991 by Sarri Gilman as an eight-bed emergency shelter for homeless teens. It has expanded to include several sites and programs focused on ending youth homelessness throughout Snohomish County.

“They had a vacancy at Cocoon House, and I thought it would be a good idea if I left home for a bit,” Ocampo said. She received permission from her mom, fighting cancer at the time and reliant on the older sister Ocampo had conflicts with. She arrived at the original Cocoon House on Cedar Street in Everett, at that time simply an emergency shelter.

Her first impressions of Cocoon House? It was clean and safe.

“There were a lot of rules in place, which was intimidating to me because I wasn’t used to that. It was clean and the most orderly system I had been exposed to, other than school. It was the healthy break I needed from the issues I had going on at home.”

Over time, a teenage Ocampo struggled with the rules at Cocoon House and would leave, but frequently seemed drawn back.

“I stayed on the streets for a while. I befriended people who were homeless teenagers like me and stayed with them, so I was never alone. I tried going home, but it was the same thing over and over, and I felt like I had to be independent. If I was on the streets, I would try to go to Cocoon House. If I felt unsafe and needed a break from whichever group of kids I was with, I would go back to Cocoon House for respite if they had a bed open.”

At one point, Ocampo moved into Cocoon House’s long-term housing facility, then located on Pine Street in Everett. She would sometimes leave – she said up to 16 times – but always found her way back to Cocoon House when she needed it.

“Cocoon House was always there for me when I was ready, even when it took that many times of coming back and leaving,” she said. “Those people were my family.”

A stereotype

"There is a lot of myth, stigma, and stereotype about what drives a youth into becoming unhoused,” said Cocoon House CEO Joseph Alonzo. “There’s really no typical story. We see a lot of family and generational poverty, where the family is underhoused and the youth is now old enough to kind of fend for themselves. But they are still teens, and they still need support.”

While some of the factors contributing to adult homelessness, such as poverty and unaffordable housing, can also affect teens and young adults, there are often more complicated issues at play.

“Kids become homeless for very different reasons than adults,” said Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin, Cocoon House’s former CEO. “For kids, they have usually experienced trauma, domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction, have untreated behavioral health concerns, or it could even be that parents aren’t accepting of a youth’s identity. And then when they become homeless, they are immediately exposed to trauma on the street.

“There are countless stories of kids moving into Cocoon House and carrying their belongings in a garbage bag. It’s all they have.”

Whether kids are fleeing trauma or just arriving from families struggling to get by, Cocoon House is there to help. Its headquarters, a building known as the HUB, offers long-term transitional housing for kids aged 16-17, as well as young adult housing for those aged 18-24. “We have 20 units of what we call the ‘micro-studios,’ but they are very similar to dormitory-style housing,” said Alonzo. “Each unit has their own bedroom and living space, sink, microwave, small dorm-style refrigerator, and each has their own restroom and shower.”

Outside of those individual rooms, there are larger communal living rooms and residential-style kitchens. Youth and young adult housing areas are on two separate floors, with security measures in place to prevent unauthorized access.

The creation of the HUB is almost 10 years in the making – the capital campaign that provided funding for construction of the site began in 2016 – and the facility opened its doors in the summer of 2019. While Cocoon House continues to offer emergency shelter for those aged 12-17 at its Monroe location, the larger building in Everett has allowed for expanded programming and consolidation of other sites.

Emancipated

Former resident Ocampo, now 34, is glad that Cocoon House has been able to expand into young adult housing. She was 17 when her mother died, and became an emancipated minor. She earned her GED, went to school for medical assisting, and joined the workforce. But she still struggled to find stable housing.

“That’s a need (Cocoon House was) aware they had to address,” she said. “They just didn’t have resources for my age group.”

After leaving Cocoon House, she moved into transitional housing through another organization. That lasted 18 months. “After that, it took me a few years to be financially stable and to have housing security.”

Eventually, Ocampo joined the Cocoon House board of directors, at the encouragement of Franklin, who she has known since she was 16.

“(Franklin) was adamant about getting a youth perspective on the board,” said Ocampo, who served on the board for nine years. “It gave me the opportunity to say thank you to my community, and it also gave me the opportunity to think bigger – past what I’m capable of as an individual to how I can work with others to create something greater.” She also worked on the capital campaign that led to the eventual creation of the HUB.

Today, a popular HUB feature is a drop-in center known as U-Turn, open daily on the first floor. The warm and inviting space resembles a living room with cozy couches, video games, and well-stocked bookshelves. A hot meal is served every night. Kids can access restrooms, showers, and laundry facilities, as well as on-site staff to help them navigate any resources they might need.

The drop-in center also includes a medical clinic space, Nurse practitioners from Community Health Center are available multiple times a week to help those who may feel uncomfortable in other health-care settings.

Breaking the cycle

Cocoon House has a mission to break the cycle of youth homelessness – not only through outreach and housing, but also through prevention, which is a key pillar of its work.

“We believe that we are going to end homelessness eventually by preventing it from happening in the first place,” said Alonzo. “When families call us and want to get a youth into the shelter, we really dig into why, and we try to keep that family intact. We do community-based work, we go into homes, and work with families that are in crisis. We try to figure out what’s the root cause, provide services, education, and case management support.”

The original Cocoon House on Everett’s Cedar Street now serves as a family and engagement resource center. “We set that up to be welcoming to families to come by during open house hours and just be able to talk to the teen about what they might be experiencing,” Alonzo said.

Youth and young adults who identify as LGBTQ+ may be at increased risk of becoming unhoused. “We see lots and lots of young people who identify as LGBTQ and leave the home because they don’t feel that coming out is safe, or they have come out and get asked to leave,” said Alonzo, who also noted that 40-45% of the youth that Cocoon House serves identify as LGBTQ. “A lot of our parenting classes and our parent work is around trying to help families navigate that phenomenon.”

In addition to outreach, housing, and prevention services, recent growth has allowed Cocoon House to expand its education and employment offerings. It currently partners with Workforce Snohomish, Seattle Jobs Initiative, and Refugee and Immigrant Services Northwest to provide employment services and engage young people in job readiness development.

“We have paid internships that we are able to provide in different placements around the community, and lots of training, lots of assessment, just helping young people get the skills needed to become employable or maintain employment,” Alonzo said. There is also a classroom space and technology center to host educational courses.

As one of the only local resources available to address youth homelessness in the area, Cocoon House receives requests for its services to expand in Snohomish County. While it is looking to expand into south Snohomish County in the near future, Alonzo said one of the most exciting new programs, Connections Host Homes, was developed from a desire to address growing needs in the most cost-effective way.

“It’s an idea of engaging members of our community who might have an extra room in their house. In a partnership with Cocoon House and a young person that is in need, they would basically host them, similar to how a family might host a foreign exchange student.”

These homes allow children to stay within their own communities.

“These are youth that are typically new to homelessness, so they are not our street-dependent young people, but they are youth that are identified as needing a quick environment that is homelike and safe,” Alonzo said. By keeping the kids in their community, the Host Homes program allows kids to stay connected to their school, which Alonzo said is the other primary institution in their life, outside of their family.

Ocampo said that if a Host Home had been available when she was homeless, it might have helped her stay connected to her school and community. “I probably would have wanted to go to school if I had that opportunity when I first went to Cocoon House. I wouldn’t have been so isolated.”

Alonzo said that Host Homes offer a way for kids to immediately stabilize after becoming homeless. “When we find these hosts in communities that these youth are already tied to, we have found that there is a bond that is created and that the families provide immediate safety for that youth.”

“If we have a family in Mukilteo that will hopefully host youth in the Mukilteo School District, then they have some commonality already – the youth and host family might know the same great little restaurant (and) might have these connections that help build some community and trust together.”

Signing up to be a Host Home is a lower-obligation commitment than fostering a child. Families host a youth for up to 21 days, which can work well for families who only have space available during part of the year. Extensive background checks and training are provided.

For Everett Mayor Franklin, Cocoon House is an essential organization protecting some of the most vulnerable members of the community. She described the case of one 13-year-old boy who was about the size of a 9-year-old, whose mother was struggling with significant behavioral health challenges.

“He broke my heart,” she said. “He was very small, and without Cocoon House he would have been sleeping outside. As a mom – I have a 15-year-old daughter – I can’t imagine her being outside for even a minute. Yet there are kids even younger than her who are in these life-and-death situations. I am very grateful to have Cocoon House in our world.”

Franklin also wanted to remind folks that homeless youth are not to be feared.

“They’re just kids!” she said. “They may look fierce, some are even growing beards, but they’re just kids and need support.”

Ocampo agreed. She is a mother herself now, and recently graduated with a Master’s of Clinical Health Services from MEDEX NW at the University of Washington to become a physician assistant.

“If someone had slammed the door in my face, on my eighth visit to Cocoon House, it would have changed the course of my life,” she said. “I would have become a sex worker, or hooked on drugs. I am very lucky that I never entered the criminal justice system, or befriended a pimp. That organization saved my life. They never gave up on me.”

For more information, or to support Cocoon House, visit
cocoonhouse.org or call 425-259-5802.