Jeremiah was a 17-year-old in south San 
Francisco with just three weeks until his high school graduation.
For him, graduating would be a triumphant punctuation mark. For the past three years up until this April, California’s foster-care system had bounced Jeremiah through 14 placements in three different cities.
Then, that same month, the phone call came. Just three weeks before his high school graduation, Jeremiah was told that he was going to San Diego. His group home, known as Burrell Place, which had been in operation for more than 20 years in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, would be shutting down.
He says that the group home’s owner told him it was too expensive to keep the place running. Jeremiah, who will turn 18 in just a couple of weeks, remembers the uncertainty he felt knowing that he was going to lose yet another home.
“I had no idea what I was going to do,” he said. “I started frantically packing my things and calling my friends in San Francisco, telling them what was happening. I thought I wasn’t going to graduate high school on time.”
Luckily, Jeremiah’s story has a happy ending.
Out of County, CA is a series of stories about the experiences of out-of-county foster youth in California. To continue reading Part 7, go to:
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