Mark L. Lindsey founded StreetKidz in February 2025 after becoming involved with an unrelated investigation into the Southern California homeless crisis. At that time, Mark became aware of the magnitude and seriousness of the unaccompanied homeless youth population in San Diego and Los Angeles counties which have 33% of the total U.S. homeless youth population, currently estimated to be 4.3 million youths annually, there are 4,300+ homeless youth just in San Diego county. There are no local or state resources available to the homeless youth, there are no shelter beds available except where they are provided by our program or the Covenant House International Homeless Youth National model which we are perfectly aligned with, same mission, same goals, different operational approach that does not replace, but amplifies well tested emergency housing and shelter services on a temporary (14-21 day/90-day) or permanent placement (1-year+). We use a newly created housing model that that is not reliant on the severely underdeveloped shelter system which has no capacity to absorb even one of the youths seeking shelter. Our practical approach is based on simple logic, the core need is to provide a safe place to spend the night without fear of abuse or exploitation. Placement assistance in the form of non-custodial voluntary participation in specialty designated Federal authorities does not have to be an indoor residence, hotel room, shelter bed or temporary resting area, it can be a marked and designated urban area that is under the monitoring and control of homeless youth legal advocates, us, we're the homeless youth legal advocates, we're the only ones in the US that educate and represent homeless youth as a core mission, every homeless youth is represented by our legal counsel and their status as an independent student is validated with the protection of the Street Kidz Bill of Rights, which are not new doctrines, they're formerly unused Federal and state laws, but the Street Kidz can't exercise rights that they don't know they have. So that's the first core benefit, it's foundational, because all Street Kidz have the same obstacles to surmount that create logjams limiting success. Virtually all the homeless youth have involved judicial records involving substances abuse, panhandling, failure to ID, loitering, and truancy, most have been cited multiple times for multiple petty offenses and have generally ignored required court appearances so it's just a matter of time until bench warrants get issued and forced placement gets mandated, it's a serious, complicated and paralytic revolving door that the youth will carry with them forever, one that will hold them back, keep them isolated, and exacerbate the crisis environment that they must live in. That's the first thing that our legal counsel does, the attorneys seeks to remove or resolve all of the legal issues, all the citations, violations, and inadvertent liabilities that the homeless youth have to deal with, we're experts at resolving legal issues affecting the youth.
