David Baker was a 16-year-old attending El Cajon Valley High School when he found himself falling into the same pattern his mother and his grandmother had.
He was homeless, facing intergenerational poverty without stable housing or a support system.
“The systems aren’t built to support people from underresourced communities in a meaningful and intentional way,” Baker said.
As a minor trying to avoid getting put into the foster care system, Baker spent most nights walking around.
During the day, he’d be too tired for school and instead would search for a place to nap, often finding the backseat of a trolley on the 35-minute ride from El Cajon to downtown was the perfect spot.
Baker spent the next five years facing the harsh reality of homelessness, primarily using his own “two feet,” as he jokingly put it, and public transportation to get around.
Today, Baker is program director for the YMCA of San Diego County’s Housing our Youth program.
But Baker is reverting back to his old ways to exemplify how difficult it is for those living in destitution to escape that fate. He and a fellow YMCA staffer are embarking on a seven-day, 550-mile journey from San Diego to Sacramento in an effort to bring attention to the challenges homeless youth face every day, from getting to school to finding a safe place to sleep.
“This journey is really rooted in making a change for young people who were born into situations that they couldn’t control,” Baker said.
One of the signs held up at the third annual YMCA Solidarity Journey at the Border View Family YMCA in Otay Mesa.
(Meg McLaughlin/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
This is the third annual — and final — Solidarity Journey, where Baker and Justin Lipford, director of community engagement for YMCA of San Diego County, are walking, biking and taking public transit all the way to the state capitol, sleeping at local YMCAs and public rest stops along the way.
California not only has the highest rate of homelessness but also has the country’s highest number of young people experiencing homelessness, accounting for over a third of all unaccompanied youth nationally, according to federal statistics.
Locally, there are an estimated 20,000 homeless children and youth in San Diego County, according to San Diego Youth Services.
Half of homeless adults first experience homelessness under the age of 25.
“If we focus on youth homelessness, we can break the cycle of homelessness altogether,” Lipford said. “Hopefully we can move people from being apathetic to empathetic, and if that happens, then I think we’re going to start to see almost like a community shift.”
That’s why the YMCA Youth & Family Services has nearly a dozen programs that help youth facing housing instability.
It was while working with some of these programs that Lipford met Baker. Lipford said he was inspired by Baker’s resilience and hope — two characteristics he said are really representative of the homeless youth population.
Together, they decided to find a way to shed more light on the specific challenges facing young people experiencing homelessness — and convince youth of their own potential, which Lipford says is often the most challenging part in helping them find a path out of homelessness.
In 2021, Baker and Lipford walked from Oceanside to San Ysidro for the first Solidarity Journey. Last year, the pair traveled from Los Angeles to San Ysidro during National Runaway and Homeless Youth Prevention Month in November.
This will be the final year of the journey, so they decided to take it up a notch and take their message all the way to state leaders in Sacramento.
Justin Lipford, director of community engagement for YMCA of San Diego County, right, and David Baker, program director for Housing Our Youth at the YMCA of San Diego County, back left, high-five people at the Border View Family YMCA.
(Meg McLaughlin/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Baker and Lipford are expected to make it to the capitol on Wednesday, where they said they hope to garner enough attention to meet with Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“I’m proud of the work David and Justin have done to elevate the issue, bringing our entire YMCA team together to understand that this crisis is all of our responsibility, and that youth homelessness is a community issue that requires a community solution,” YMCA of San Diego County CEO Todd Tibbits said.
After starting their journey bright and early Wednesday morning at YMCA Camp Surf in Imperial Beach, they traveled to the Border View Family YMCA in Otay Mesa for a rally and 3-mile walk to the Palomar Transit Station.
“It’s a worthy cause that everybody can get behind — nobody wants to see people living on the streets … much less youth,” said Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, who met with Baker and Lipford Wednesday.
Although Imperial Beach saw a 24 percent reduction in its homeless population during the last point-in-time count, Aguirre says providing resources and services to unsheltered individuals continues to be a daily challenge.
“So I think that getting as many resources as possible from our state is incredibly important,” she added.
On Sunday, Baker and Lipford will be traveling the 188 miles from San Luis Obispo to San Jose.
With each step, they are trying to share the message that all youth deserve to have adults step-up to provide support so they can rise above their circumstances.
“That’s what charges me up when I’m feeling tired or when my legs are shaky,” Baker said.
The pair not only hopes to bring strategies from other communities back to San Diego, but also that the endeavor can generate future policy changes that step by step will end youth homelessness altogether and ensure others don’t have to experience the same fate Baker did.
Learn more about the YMCA of San Diego County’s Solidarity Journey to end youth homelessness at SoJoCali.com.
