The Lopez family: Building a future beyond foster care
Before Jorge Lopez ever built a home, he knew what it felt like to leave one behind. At six years old, he arrived in Miami from Cuba – with his family and not much else. But years later, the boy who once craved a sense of belonging would help foster kids to discover one of their own.
Jorge’s early years in the United States were hard. He didn’t speak English, his family moved often, and he found himself increasingly lost in classrooms where he struggled to keep up academically. By ninth grade, he dropped out of school entirely and went to work.
But through determination, he earned his GED and later graduated with highest honors from Florida International University. With a degree in finance and business, he started his career in banking and then moved into real estate development. During this time, he also married and started a family, raising his children in the Christian faith his parents had instilled in him.
In 1993, Jorge founded The Cornerstone Group, a builder and manager of affordable housing developments throughout South Florida. In 2010, his son, Pablo, joined the team, and together, they’ve worked to grow the business into one of South Florida’s leading affordable housing developers.
And through developing affordable housing, God unexpectedly drew Jorge’s attention to a certain group of often-overlooked people.
A burden without a blueprint
Well into his career, Jorge began to notice that young adults who had aged out of foster care were moving into some of the communities his company had developed. Many had finally found a safe place to live, but too often, they struggled to stay there.
“They didn’t know how to live independently,” Jorge says. “They made wrong choices with friends, drugs, and everything else that happens. And inevitably, they got evicted from the apartments.”
He couldn’t shake what he was seeing.
“These are kids that didn’t know better,” he says. “They have to survive.”
Jorge knew and understood housing, but housing alone wasn’t enough to help these kids succeed. If he was going to help in a lasting way, he also needed to understand the foster care system and the unique challenges these kids were facing. For years, the burden stayed with him. Then God introduced him to a community that had been preparing for this moment all along.
An ecosystem years in the making
Long before they met Jorge and Pablo, the leadership team at NCF South Florida along with some generous givers had made foster care one of their primary cause concerns. They became aware that Miami had one of the worst foster care systems in the nation. With no support system in place, children aging out of foster care frequently faced homelessness, human trafficking, incarceration, and devastating instability. But they were determined to change all that.
They launched an initiative called Explore Foster Miami, bringing together churches, nonprofit leaders, foster care organizations, and generous families – all around an audacious shared vision: to see no child left in foster care.
Rather than working independently, these organizations began building an ecosystem of care, each contributing their unique expertise and resources to help vulnerable children thrive. When Jorge and Pablo were introduced to that community through NCF South Florida, everything changed. The community was able to educate them on older foster kids’ unique challenges, and Jorge and Pablo were able to immediately assist in one of the biggest hurdles: housing.
Building more than homes
Their first step was a collaboration with Fritzie Saintoiry, the woman who leads Genesis Hopeful Haven. Fritzie’s ministry prepares youth to successfully transition from the foster care system to a purpose-driven adulthood. Jorge and Pablo purchased and donated a home for Genesis Hopeful Haven, where Fritzie could care for girls aging out of foster care.
Much more than just a roof overhead, that first home offered young women the stability and support they needed to build a different future through mentoring, Christian counseling, life-skills training, job support, financial coaching, and a community of people who believe in them.
Once this home was up and running, Jorge and Pablo were excited to donate four more homes, valued at over $1 million each, to other foster care ministries. There are now five homes throughout Miami provided by the Lopez family serving young men, young women, sibling groups, and young mothers with children.
You can measure the impact one life at a time. One young man arrived at the Saints House boys home carrying so much trauma he could barely speak. He couldn’t sleep because of recurring nightmares. But after months of counseling and consistent care, healing began.
“He did the first 10 counseling sessions and asked for more. Now he’s fully thriving,” says Shavon Saint Preux, Founder and Director of Propelling into Triumph, the ministry that runs Saints House.
Another young man saved $8,000 while living in one of the homes, enough money to purchase his first car. He told the staff, “No one knew my name before I lived here. I finally feel like I belong.”
A model home for other cities
Pablo now helps lead much of the expansion effort, carefully searching for homes that feel warm, stable, and dignified.
“It needs to feel like a home, a place where people can grow,” he says.
Through NCF, the Lopez family has also created a supporting organization that serves as a charitable vehicle for their giving. With NCF’s help, they’ve been able to strategically give appreciated assets, like real estate and business interests that empower them to maximize every resource for ministry impact.
“NCF helps maximize the amount that a family can give,” Jorge says. “It’s really an amazing vehicle that helps us do what we do.”
And their dream for foster care now stretches far beyond Miami.
“It’s unacceptable for a child to age out of foster care and not know where they’re going tomorrow,” Pablo says. He hopes other cities will replicate what’s happening in South Florida and that more generous families will step forward to address the foster care crisis in their own communities. And they pray the Church continues working together to ensure vulnerable young people are no longer forgotten.
For Jorge and Pablo, it’s not just about housing. It’s about making sure foster kids experience something every child deserves: a place where they know they belong and are deeply loved by God.
5 things you should do on NCF’s new website
How giving transforms us
Experience the joy of generosity with a Giving Strategy™
Stable Capital Pool: Tiered structure