Laurel House

Providing a home for teens in crisis, transforming lives, and strengthening families.

Laurel House, now Hope Harbor, began as a dream of two women who loved teenagers. Nadene Holub and Elinor Tompkins worked in the nursery of their church for several years before their commitment to serve the community and their concern for homeless teens led them to establish Laurel House, Inc. Nadene, a school nurse in the Tustin Unified School District, was deeply trouble by the number of teens who were living on the streets in her community. She continually sought shelter for these teens in private homes. Unfortunately, the supply of suitable families with which to house these teens was very limited. After being asked several times to house homeless teens, Elinor suggested they create a place where theses teens could stay on a temporary basis. In 1985, Laurel House, now Hope Harbor, was founded and provided an emergency crisis shelter to runaway and homeless teens.

Through the years, Hope Harbor evolved into California's only, long-term, privately funded preventive care transitional housing programs for runaway, homeless and at-risk teen girls and boys ages 12-17.  Our goal is to prevent homelessness for at-risk teens by reunifying them with their families or moving them into a positive living situation. While parents tend to focus on and react to the outer destructive behavioral actions of their teens such as breaking curfew, skipping school, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, or being sexually promiscuous, Hope Harbor peels away those outer layers of their behavior to find the root cause of their choices.

In addition to providing long-term housing and care, Hope Harbor provides access to healthcare, chronic disease health care, mental health care, obesity prevention, preventative care, substance use prevention, and educational attainment.

100% of these families come from low- to moderate-income households and have limited resources for counseling and mental health care.

Hope Harbor is filling in a gap of services in California by stabilizing these teen girls and boys and transforming their lives before they end up on the streets or become wards of the court system. Through our crisis intervention program, it is our goal to keep the family unit intact without requiring the involvement of a public agency such as social services.

Our mission is providing a home for teens in crisis, transforming lives, and strengthening families.

Our goal is to end homelessness for runaway, homeless and at-risk teen girls and boys. We achieve this through three main objectives: 1) Provide long term housing, food and basic necessities to an average of 20 teens per year. 2) Provide mental health services including weekly counseling, and proper diagnosis and treatment of mental, social or emotional disorders for the teen girls and boys. 3) Enhance and support overall academic performance including school credit recovery, improvement in 90% of school grades, and by maintaining 99% school attendance. Our expected outcome is to reunify these teens with their families or move them into positive living situations.

Hope Harbor accomplished the following in FY2023: 13 teen girls and 12 teen boys had a safe place to live and stayed off the streets. Support and counseling were provided for 116 additional family members. We provided more than 2,834 shelter bed nights, 568 case management sessions, 8,565 home-cooked meals, and 2,946 rides to school, volunteer opportunities, and activities. We also provided quality mental health care, which included more than 596 life-skills training sessions, 822 individual and family counseling sessions, and 37 crisis intervention sessions. 100% of the teens maintained a 99% school attendance record and raised their GPA by an average of 1.25 points.

California has the highest number of homeless and hungry youth in the United States, and there is a pressing need for more shelter and mental health programs for homeless and at-risk teens in California. More than 24,600 school-aged children are considered “homeless or living in unstable housing arrangements” in Orange County. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, teen suicide is the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 15-24. 3 in 5 teens with depression received no mental health treatment. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, teenagers in California are 24.46% more likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen.

Hope Harbor fills a significant gap in California as the only long-term (12-18 months) youth shelter program for homeless and at-risk teens. Hope Harbor provides a “home” for homeless and at-risk teens, equipping them with the tools and support to achieve their educational goals and develop independent living skills. We focus on breaking the cycles of homelessness, addiction, and broken family relationships. Services include long-term safe shelter, nutritious meals, live-in case management, medical, dental, optical, and mental health care, counseling, STEAM education, college readiness, individualized tutoring, nutrition education, physical fitness, and life skills training. Of the teens we serve, 100% come from low-to-moderate-income households and have limited resources for food, care, education, counseling, and mental health therapy.

Hope Harbor is located in Tustin, CA, but serves runaway, homeless or at-risk teens from Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and San Diego County.

One of the biggest blessings in my life (besides having a wonderful wife and three amazing kids) is the privilege of serving in the ministry Hope Harbor has provided to homeless and at-risk teens since they joined Orange County Rescue Mission in 2014.

Hope Harbor (formerly known as Laurel House) has been providing critical services to youth in crisis in Orange County since 1985. We are the only long-term, privately funded, preventative residential care program in all of California for teens who have a history of running away or are at risk of becoming homeless due to personal trauma or unresolved family issues within the home. With the increasing pressure teens experience driven by social media, mental health issues are unsurprisingly on the rise. Drugs, alcohol, and sexual exploration have become coping mechanisms. This is becoming an epidemic amongst our teen population.

Our supporters are integral to ensuring that our teen boys and girls are living in a safe home environment with live-in house parents, individual and family counseling, crisis counseling, nutritious meals, academic support, tutoring, and life skills training with the goal of family reunification when possible. We see the teens in our program make huge strides in their education, often being the first in their family to attend college.

Thank you for being a part of a positive and life-changing experience for the teens we are blessed to serve at Hope Harbor.

We believe that there is a significant need for ministering to young girls and boys between the ages of 12 and 17. Being on the Board at Orange County Rescue Mission, we experienced a need for a program that would serve under-aged girls and boys in a homelike environment. We are passionate about this because we have witnessed too many times when teen runaways stay away for an extended period of time and are at risk of falling prey to human traffickers. We see Hope Harbor as being a preemptive effort to fighting homelessness, alcohol or drug addiction, gang involvement, and human trafficking among teens.