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This Dallas Man Gives Homeless Kids A Home

Lara Solt
/
KERA News Special Contributor
Charles ‘CJ’ Johnson during an Action Team meeting at North Dallas High School.";s:

For more than 15 years, Charles ‘CJ’ Johnson has unofficially fostered homeless kids from North Dallas High School.

He’s made his house their home and created a family for students who need one.

He calls the kids his sons, although he has no biological children.

“I just tell them … ‘I got a lot of rules and regulations,’” CJ says. “If you want to come, and just grow up in the house and everything like that, you go to the same school. … You just come here. We live here.You graduate. That’s what our focus is going to be.”

CJ is featured in Chapter 3 ofKERA's American Graduate: Homeless In High School series.The series explores some of the issues homeless students face -- and how schools and others are trying to help. There are about 110,000 homeless kids in Texas public schools. 

Explore the series here.

Bill Zeeble has been a full-time reporter at KERA since 1992, covering everything from medicine to the Mavericks and education to environmental issues.