NEW YORK—The nights were solemn and lonely inside Mount Pisgah Baptist Church. When the long swaths of light that shone between the pews faded and darkness engulfed, Jaquan Melton, 19 at the time, went to the basement to sleep.
As a homeless youth, Melton spent a year working as a janitor at the antiquated Brooklyn church. Melton would sleep in the church’s fallout shelter, amid lockers and Clorox cleaning supplies, while the adoptive mother who abandoned him continued to receive $700 a month from the government to care for him. She would continue to cash adoption subsidy checks until he turned 21.
It’s been four years since Melton was kicked out of his adoptive mother’s home at the age of 17. Since then, he has scrambled between church basements and friends’ couches, unable to find a secure place to settle and finish high school. Meanwhile, his lawyer said his adoptive mother continued to receive around $34,000 in subsidy checks after she kicked him out. Melton hasn’t seen any of that money.
When Melton tried to apply for public assistance, the welfare agency told him he wasn’t eligible since his adoptive mother was getting stipends to care for him.
