AIMING FOR A SMOOTH TRANSITION\Program to provide special adult housing.

Byline: Luz Villarreal Daily News Staff Writer

Come summer, 12 young adults from a residential treatment center will be given their own apartments as part of a new transitional housing program.

Penny Lane, a group home for emotionally troubled youths, is rehabilitating a six-unit apartment building on Acre Street in North Hills for young people old enough to live on their own.

The Los Angeles Housing Department purchased the building for $160,000 and is providing Penny Lane with $90,000 to rehabilitate it.

The two-bedroom units will be fully furnished and available in June or July to 17- to 19-year-olds who are referred by the Department of Children and Family Services and Penny Lane. The young adults will be able to live in the apartments for three to six months, then will get help finding other, more permanent places to live.

"What happens is that a lot of the kids, after they've been through the foster care system, they are kicked loose," said Ivelise Markowitz, executive director of Penny Lane. "They don't have support to get a job, keep a job and acquire independent living skills."

The program is designed to take youths who have been physically or sexually abused as children and raised through foster care and transition them into independent living.

Residents at the complex will receive job skills and educational counseling so they will be better prepared to move into the real world.

"When you stop to think, most kids when they reach 18, you don't expect them to live on there own," said Markowitz. "We are trying to remedy that now by providing a transitional living center."

Penny Lane currently houses 104 emotionally troubled children and youths on its Rayen Street campus in North Hills and eight group homes in the San Fernando Valley.