Twelve houses in Palmdale, built so brothers and sisters stay together

On the morning of Friday 11 September, Christian Bale cut a ribbon in Palmdale, in the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles, in front of a banner that read "A village for brothers and sisters." 1

Behind the banner stands Together California: twelve three-bedroom homes on 4.67 acres beside McAdam Park, land the charity bought in 2022. Each home is built for six children and a full-time foster parent. The site also holds studio apartments for young people ageing out of care and for visiting birth parents, and a 7,000-square-foot community centre. 2 Residents begin moving in next month. 1

What I keep returning to is the arithmetic. Twelve homes at six children each comes to 72 places, if every bed is filled — a number a city can hold in its head, and one other cities could copy.

Federal law has told states to make reasonable efforts to keep siblings together since 2008, and 37 states, Washington DC and Guam now write that requirement into statute. 4

Counting whether it happens is the harder part. Casey Family Programs, which published a summary of the evidence this month, reports no reliable national figure for how many children in foster care are placed with their siblings. The clearest state-level picture comes from a 2021 Pennsylvania study: children with at least one sibling were placed with all of them in 47% of the weeks they spent in care. 4

Casey's summary lists what researchers have associated with keeping siblings together: fewer moves between homes, higher rates of reaching a permanent placement, fewer emotional and behavioural difficulties, better school performance. 4

Mars Presswood was 15 when he and his younger sibling were placed together in foster care. "Being placed together gave us the opportunity to have one person who knew every aspect of our story," he told the organisation. 4

Palmdale approved $1.2 million in housing grant funding for pre-construction costs. The county board of supervisors added $500,000 for the land, under Supervisor Kathryn Barger. AC Martin designed the village. 2

Most of the money was donated. The Austrian American Council West raised nearly $9 million of it. 1

Bale's part in this began with his first daughter. After she was born, he and his wife, Sibi, read up on California's foster system and found how often siblings leave it in separate cars. 5

"Imagine the absolute pain and the trauma of losing your parents or being torn from your parents, and then losing your brothers and sisters on top of that," he said at the ground-breaking. "That's no way to treat kids — and so, we will be the hub for that." 5

At the ribbon-cutting this month his line was shorter. "It's our job to turn their heartbreak and their pain into love and hope and a sense of future." 1

Move-ins start in October, and the first families to arrive will settle whether the campus works the way its designers drew it. 1 Each home has a full-time foster parent, and the site is organised around sibling groups — an arrangement organisers describe as uncommon for children in the system. 1 Bale has said he hopes the village will be the first of many. 5

Los Angeles County gives the project its scale. It runs the largest local child welfare system in the country, and 11,745 people aged 20 and younger were in its custody at the end of last year, a 46% fall from 21,637 in 2020. 6 That leaves the village aimed at the children the county still takes into care, and at the brothers and sisters inside those cases.

Together California takes donations through its giving page, and its village page explains how the campus is meant to work. Casey Family Programs keeps a plain-language brief on sibling placement: what the research finds, and which states have written the requirement into law.