California Set Aside $3,000 for L.A. Foster Youth. Few Have Applied.

More than 56,000 young Californians qualify for the HOPE trust accounts. Just over 650 have been approved so far.

Young people who spent more than a year and a half in California foster care can claim $3,000 from a state trust account and spend it on whatever they want. The Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance and Empowerment for Children program, or HOPE, launched in May and covers more than 56,000 eligible young Californians, EdSource reported in an account published by LAist. The money sits in an interest-bearing account, and recipients can draw on it between the ages of 18 and 26.

Nevaeh Williams, 20, entered foster care at 10, stayed until she turned 18 and now works as a certified nursing assistant in Los Angeles County while training to become a registered nurse. She's had her own apartment since shortly after aging out, and two children in it, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. She plans to spend the $3,000 on her daughter's room and on toys, blocks and flash cards for her son.

“I pay basically $2,000 in rent, and I still have all these other side bills,” she told EdSource.

The state isn't mailing checks.

Young people have to apply themselves, and getting the word out is the program's biggest problem, EdSource reported. As of that report, 2,243 applications had been submitted, the outlet found. More than 650 have been approved. More than $200,000 has gone out, against those 56,000 eligible.

Eligibility runs four ways under the program's rules.

• More than 18 months in foster care, consecutive or not.
• Family reunification services that were terminated.
• A parent's death from COVID-19 during the pandemic, for young people from low-income households.

Applicants in those groups also had to be under 18 on September 27, 2022, the day the law took effect. Anyone who qualifies but hasn't turned 18 yet can still apply and open an account. The accounts come with financial education and free, confidential financial planning.

Williams applied in June and got her approval email in August, inside the program's 90-day window. She requested her disbursement in early September. Payment takes roughly 30 days.

The Legislature created the accounts in 2022, a budget-surplus year, as children were losing parents to COVID-19 and foster youth were aging out into homelessness. Launching took four years — partly because foster care records are confidential, partly because officials consulted national experts and young people on the design. Last year the governor moved $40 million of the $100 million earmarked for HOPE to help close the state's budget gap.

Spending isn't restricted to college, job training, a business or a house, said Shimica Gaskins, president and chief executive of End Child Poverty California, which worked with lawmakers on the program. “There's something very powerful about telling a child that this money is set aside for your future, and it belongs to you,” she told EdSource.

Outreach has run through foster youth resource fairs, webinars for court-appointed advocates and trained volunteers, dependency attorneys and probation officers, and partnerships with the Youth Law Center, John Burton Advocates for Youth and campus programs. The California Department of Social Services sent counties an informational notice so social workers would know the program exists.

For anyone who qualifies and applies now, the arithmetic is simple enough: up to 90 days for an approval, about 30 more for the money.

Source: laist.com, retrieved September 18, 2026.