For Smith, furniture poverty—the inability to buy essential household items including beds, tables, and chairs—is a too-often overlooked factor in the homelessness crisis among former foster youth. In the U.S., 50% of people who have experienced homelessness have spent time in foster care, according to the National Foster Youth Institute, and roughly 25% of former foster youth experience homelessness in the first four years after aging out of the system. Meanwhile,  individuals and families transitioning out of homelessness are the top two groups served by furniture banks. The two issues, Smith argues, are interrelated. “We think we understand poverty,” she says, “but we don’t understand that the inability to maintain a home leads to tenancy failure.” 

Since its founding, A Sense of Home has served more than 3,100 former foster youth and furnished more than 2,000 homes in Los Angeles County, which has one of the largest foster youth populations in the country. Ninety-four percent of participants remain stably housed one year after entering the program, and 80% percent are able to maintain their tenancy after four years. “There’s no aging out of A Sense of Home,” Smith says, noting that a majority of participants return to the program as volunteers. Some have even joined the staff.

A Sense of Home also works to fill bureaucratic gaps. In 2024, the organization began an exclusive partnership with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in Los Angeles—which, as part of the Foster Youth to Independence Housing Voucher program, refers those transitioning out of foster care directly to the organization. The partnership has resulted in more than 100 referrals to date. The fact that DCFS “recognizes that they shouldn't be allowing kids to exit without coming to us first,” Smith says, is “a big coup.”

Last year, informed by its experiences working with displaced young people, the organization launched a disaster recovery program to help those who had lost their homes during the 2025 Los Angeles fires, creating 782 homes and impacting 2,487 individuals. By the fall, the organization projects it will have served 1,000 families in Altadena, roughly one-sixth of the area’s impacted population. 

In May, A Sense of Home made its biggest move yet: expanding to New York City, with the goal of launching in other U.S. cities and internationally. In the future, Smith also hopes to utilize ASOH’s model to support parents struggling with housing instability due to domestic violence, addiction, or economic hardship, intending to help prevent young people from entering the foster-care system in the first place. 

Looking back on the organization’s first decade, Smith reflects on the life lessons the work has taught her. “Community is everything,” she says. “We need to be connected. We need to show up in spaces to work on solutions together.”