Nonprofit Leader Transforms Adversity into Mentorship for Foster Youth
SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CALIF. – By the time he was in middle school, Dontae Lartigue had lost his primary caregiver to cancer. He was homeless, dealing drugs and hanging out with gang members. His future seemed to hold two options: death or prison.
But with the help of a man who stepped into his life and became a father figure, Lartigue made it to his 20s and found a purpose in helping kids with similar backgrounds navigate the rough waters of young adulthood.
Along the way he became a key figure in many of the County of Santa Clara’s efforts to help young people who are at risk of homelessness.
The County has made lived experience a pillar of its plan to end youth homelessness and related initiatives, bringing people who have been homeless or gone through the foster care system into the decision-making process and giving them leadership roles.
It found an ideal partner in Lartigue, who spent most of his childhood in foster care and transformed his experience into a passion for helping young people at risk of homelessness. The nonprofit he founded, called Razing the Bar, provides housing and mentorship to current and former foster youth.
Lartigue was a founder of the Hub, the County’s youth-led community center for current and former foster youth, and a leader of the campaign to build a new and better home for the facility a couple miles southwest of downtown San José.
He advises the County and community partners on numerous programs related to homelessness and affordable housing, including the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, a national initiative to end youth homelessness that has provided nearly $13 million in federal funding to the County.
KJ Kaminski, deputy director of the County of Santa Clara Office of Supportive Housing, calls Lartigue “one of the strongest advocates for youth and unhoused people” she has met.
“He speaks from his own experience, from experience that he has supporting others, in a way that is genuine and meaningful,” said Kaminski, whose department works to increase the supply of affordable housing in the county and connect residents with supportive housing services. “He’s really changed the way I look at some of the problems that we’re facing as a community today.”
“Dontae is an amazing person,” said County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who has known Lartigue for more than a decade. “He is kind, he is driven, he is empathetic, he is pragmatic, and he is a leader.”
Beginnings
Lartigue was born at Stanford Hospital. His childhood was marked by instability and trauma.
Until the age of 8, he bounced around Santa Clara County between his mother, who struggled with addiction, and grandmother, who had recurring cancer.
After his grandmother died, Lartigue was placed in a shelter and separated from his three siblings, including his twin sister. He went to an abusive foster home and began acting out, winding up in juvenile hall.
Lartigue was sent to live with relatives in Fresno, where many of his cousins were involved in gangs. Neglected by caregivers, he became a self-described “street kid,” dealing drugs by the age of 10. He witnessed a fatal drive-by shooting while playing tackle football in the street. Lartigue ran away from home and, after couch-surfing for a while, found a place to sleep on the roof of his middle school.
The school intervened, and Lartigue asked to return to Santa Clara County, where he eventually met a new foster family and a father figure who would turn his life around. His foster father, Freddie Lee Shackelfoot, provided the guidance and unconditional love he had craved, preaching optimism and the importance of making good choices and seizing opportunities.
It took a while for the lessons to stick. Lartigue tended to self-sabotage and push people away, and he continued to get in fights and trouble with the law. But as he matured, his foster father’s wisdom gradually took hold.
Shackelfoot was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and died that December, when Lartigue was 19. In their last conversation, hours before he passed, he told Lartigue that he loved him and believed that he could make a difference in the world.
“He told me, ‘Go out there and be the young man I know you can be,’” Lartigue recalled. “What’s always stuck with me is how, even in his last moments on earth, he was thinking about others and trying to reassure them that everything was going to be okay.”
The Hub
One of the first meetings that Cindy Chavez held in 2013 after winning a special election for the District 2 seat on the Board of Supervisors was with a group of young people who were demanding improvements to the Hub.
The leader of the group was Lartigue. He had followed his foster father’s advice and, in 2010, grabbed hold of an opportunity to join a group of current and former foster youth whom the County had tasked with developing the Hub. But after a promising start, they felt that the Hub had drifted away from the vision of its young founders. They thought the facility was in a poor location and no longer met the needs of the people it served.
Lartigue went into the meeting with Chavez “ready to go to war.” He was surprised when Chavez, instead of pushing back on their demands, greeted them with open arms.
“As I was talking to them, I realized that I was talking to my children,” Chavez recalled. “If they are foster youth, they belong to the County and to every adult in our society. We’re obligated to help those children succeed.”
The meeting planted the seed for a transformation of the Hub, leading not only to short-term improvements and increases to the salaries of those who work there, but also to the redevelopment of the community center.
And it was the beginning of a friendship and working partnership between Chavez and Lartigue.
“I have never forgotten that first time I met him,” said Chavez, who was inspired by the passion Lartigue and his peers showed for improving the lives of the next generation of foster youth.
In December 2023, the County and partners broke ground on the new Hub, which will feature 81 units of affordable housing, 40 of which will be designated for young people who are transitioning out of foster care.
Incorporating affordable housing into the Hub was essential, according to Lartigue and other foster youth involved in the project. Without stable housing, it’s incredibly hard for emancipated foster youth to find their footing and begin their adult lives.
Like the current Hub, the new facility will provide access to an array of services, from mental health counseling to legal advice, along with computers and printers, hygiene products, showers and laundry.
The new 17,000-square-foot building will also feature a garden, children’s playground, and barbecue area. And it will provide a much warmer and more welcoming space than the current facility, which is located in an industrial park in East San José.
At the groundbreaking, Lartigue was “ecstatic.”
“I’m just happy to know that some of my peers will get the housing they need, and countless others will get the services they need here,” he said.
Razing the Bar
Lartigue founded Razing the Bar in 2017 to fill what he saw as two critical gaps in services to young people leaving the foster care system, which typically happens between the ages of 18 and 24.
First, the nonprofit provides transitional housing to former foster youth. At the moment, Razing the Bar houses more than a dozen people at multiple sites, with plans to increase that number to as many as 50.
Second, the organization provides not just mentorship but community to transition-age youth, who often enter adulthood without any family or institutional support.
“Foster youth have taken care of each other forever, but it hasn’t been institutionalized,” Lartigue said. “When I was emancipated and out in the streets, it was mostly my peers who were helping me survive.”
Lartigue and his staff, comprised mostly of former foster youth, help young people adapt to the adult world, letting them know what programs and services are available to them and how to use them. They help them improve their credit, advocate for themselves at work, figure out their educational plans and apply for scholarships.
Razing the Bar also hosts regular community dinners, where staff and clients relax and catch up in a family atmosphere.
Molly Orsburn, operations manager for Razing the Bar, grew up in the foster care system and understands how lonely it can be for foster youth.
One problem, she said, is that case managers, social workers and therapists are not allowed to maintain connections with foster youth when those services end. That leaves young people without long-term relationships and support systems. Orsburn said youth need “someone to call in the middle of the night, to help change a tire, or to celebrate a victory.”
Razing the Bar provides that connection and, as Chavez puts it, a “deep sense of belonging.”
Whereas foster youth may see their case manager just an hour a month, young people working with Razing the Bar meet and talk to staff several hours per week.
“What is unique and powerful about Razing the Bar is that it’s built on relationships with clients,” said Kaminski. “A lot of what we hear from youth and young adults in our work is that many of their interactions with our systems, and systems across the state, feel transactional – that they have to do X in order to get Y – and that relationship isn’t there. Razing the Bar is founded on building relationships that are really powerful and meaningful.”
Blessings
As it expands to serve more clients, Razing the Bar is growing. The organization recently hired its sixth full-time employee.
Lartigue’s family has grown as well. He and his wife now have four children together. Lartigue delights in providing his kids the attention and bonding that he never received. And he’s passing his father figure’s optimism down to the next generation.
“I tell my kids all the time, ‘We’re blessed,’” he said. “No matter what I face, I’m blessed beyond measure.”