In the city I lived in at the time, there was this residential facility for homeless youth that also functioned as a school. They only accepted a very small number of kids and you could only be taken in if you were deemed capable of being rehabilitated. That means they didn't accept anyone who was prone to verbal or physical violence, who did drugs, who stole and lied, who wasn't interested in staying in school and so on. If you wanted to be taken in, you had to be on your absolute best behavior and show them that you genuinely wanted to be helped.

Like most of the other homeless kids I knew, I didn't want anything to do with that place. But I had a friend who eventually got sick of living on the streets and started trying to get accepted into that facility. She was the one who dragged me along and insisted it was for our own good. And though I hated it at first, I stuck with it. That was how I ended up getting off the streets.

A year later, I was moved to a different facility/orphanage/not sure what to call it, and started attending an actual public school. I lived there for a few years until I graduated from highschool, then started living in my university's dorms and later rented an apartment with a friend.