DETROIT (WXYZ) — There are more than 10,000 children in foster care in Michigan. Once they become adults and age out of the system many become homeless or worse.
And now, with the cold ushering in for the soon-to-be winter season, they need help now more than ever.
Carolyn Clifford visited Greater Grace Temple in Detroit where Bishop Charles Ellis has been leading this ministry since his father passed away in 1996.
He has been in the prisons; he built a senior citizen complex, and he’s opened schools, but now as he approaches retirement, he says God put it on his heart to help young men aging out of foster care.
He believes the way to do that is to give them an affordable place to call home.
Bishop Ellis is most comfortable behind the pulpit but today he walked the streets with me near Clairmount and Woodward in Detroit. It is here on Woodward that he plans to open a 62-room apartment building.
It’s an area that is seeing movement with a new senior center is now under construction and a facility that just opened two weeks ago for the LGBTQ-plus community.
But Bishop Ellis believes he can make a big impact in the lives of young men aging out of foster care who often become lost and disillusioned.
“It came to my attention that Michigan ranks 49th in positive outcomes in youth aging out of foster care,” said Bishop Ellis.
“I grew up struggling really bad, I’ve been house to house, couch to couch,” said Derrick Ebanks.
“It’s just like to the point, I wanted to give up,” added Ebanks who survived foster care since infancy.
We caught up Derrick Ebanks at a job fair at Michigan works in Detroit. He’s homeless and was placed in foster care as an infant. At 22 a facility like the one Bishop Ellis intends to build would be life-changing.
At 64-years-old, Bishop Ellis shared with Channel 7 exclusively he would be stepping down from the pulpit to devote his life in retirement to this work.
Despite the struggles of growing up in foster care, Ebanks graduated from high school and hopes to get training in one of the trades. In Bishop Ellis’ facility called Sanctuary he would live on a voucher system, and it would give him and others like him a fresh start on a life full of struggle.
WXYZ’s Carolyn Clifford asked, “What happens to our young men when they start aging out of foster care and they’re on the streets?”
“I have done my investigations and top 5 outcomes; prison, premature death, homelessness, drugs, and sex trafficking,” said Ellis.
“I’m looking at doing something in this area as well for young men aging out of foster care 18-24 years old,” said Ellis.
“My next is hands-on ministry and not from the pulpit,” explained Bishop Ellis.
Bishop Ellis hopes to have all the details worked out by January and a groundbreaking not too long after.
There are nearly 5000 foster families in Michigan but so many more are needed to help the crush of kids who must survive without the typical family structure that many of us sometimes take for granted.
