There are plenty of new neighborhoods taking shape around Southern California, but this one wasn’t built for buyers or rentes. Tucked into the Antelope Valley, a new 4.7-acre community has been designed to give children in foster care a chance to grow up with their siblings.
The village has now opened in Palmdale after years of planning, with actor Christian Bale helping turn the idea into reality. The $22 million project includes 12 homes, shared outdoor spaces and a community center, creating a small neighborhood specifically for children in the foster-care system.
A village where siblings can stay together
The community, called Together California, looks deliberately different from the image many people might have of a traditional foster-care facility. There are 12 individual homes, rather than one large residential building. Each house can accommodate up to six children, with trained foster parents living alongside them. The idea is to allow larger sibling groups to remain under the same roof instead of being placed in different homes.
The 4.7-acre property also has gardens, open spaces and a community center, giving the children places to spend time together outside their homes. There are even two studio apartments on the property. They’re intended to provide transitional housing for young people leaving foster care and temporary accommodation for birth parents working toward reunification.
That makes the project about more than simply providing beds. The goal is to create a place where children can have something that resembles an ordinary neighborhood — a front door, a garden, familiar faces and, importantly, their siblings nearby.
It took years to become a reality
The idea goes back nearly two decades, when Bale began looking more closely at what happens to children who lose their parents and enter the foster-care system. “It’s our job to turn their heartbreak and their pain into love and hope and a sense of future”, Bale told ABC7. Together California acquired the Palmdale property in 2022, with construction beginning in 2024. The finished village is now being presented as a new model for keeping sibling groups together while providing support for both children and their families. As reported by ABC7, organizers said people will begin moving into the community next month.
