STUDY: 40 Percent Of Homeless Youth Are LGBT, Family Rejection Is Leading Cause

[redstar826]

As many as 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT, and a new Williams Institute study of youth shelters confirms this estimate. Between October 2011 and March 2012, 354 agencies completed surveys about their clients and found that about 40 percent of their homeless and non-homeless clients were LGBT (9 percent of whom identified as bisexual

Comments

[sparkindarkness]

This is such a major issues - and worse that so many homeless charities are religious in nature, which means so many of the services that are available are problematic, painful and difficult for GBLT youth. (Pet haate of mine since we have an awesome homeless shelter in my city - run by the Salvation freaking army, gits)

Too many people think of charities to help address homelessness - but we need services, non-discriminatory services (and a major societal shift)

[redstar826]

I've heard stories about Salvation Army and other similar groups being really shitty to gay people (especially couples) seeking shelter. Trying to split up couples and stuff like that.

Detroit, which is the nearest big city to me, does have a group that runs a shelter for homeless lgbt youth (http://www.ruthelliscenter.org/). But it is the only such shelter in the entire mid western US

[chasingtides]

Do you know how they handle trans* youth homelessness?

It's something that's big on my radar because... personal reasons, but also because in my city - Philadelphia - we've notoriously not got a single shelter (private or otherwise) that allows ANY trans* individuals entrance. So if you're trans* and you lose your home, no matter your age or situation, Philly says, "Fuck you, you're not worth it."

[redstar826]

I honestly don't know a lot about them (I'm an hour's drive north of the city).

Just looking over the website, everything I'm seeing stuff that talks about lgbtq youth and their mission statement is "To provide short-term and long-term residential safe space and support services for runaway, homeless and at-risk gay, lesbian, bi-attractional, transgender and questioning youth in Detroit and Southeastern Michigan" so I am assuming that they do have services for trans* youth.

But, I can't give you anything more specific than what is on their website

[poetic_pixie_13]

This has been known for a while with folks who work with homeless youth and queer and trans youth. Hell, a lot of qt folks I know have been homeless at one point or another, some are lucky to find a couch to crash on before they can find housing. A lot are forced sex work to survive, it's how a lot of the drug addiction in the qt community starts. Facilities tend to not be formally equipped to deal with queer youth, if you're lucky you can get some help without having to closet yourself. But of these kids aren't. Most shelters just don't know what to do with trans folks. A lot of people are turned away from women's shelters cause of it.

It's just... heartbreaking, honestly. It's one of things that needs to be addressed the most in our communities. It's also the hardest to address cause straight cis people don't want to think about why these kids are on the street.

[redstar826]

Yeah, this certainly isn't new information, but I think it's good to have the numbers available all the same

[romp]

I heard numbers like this over 15 years ago but I've also seen them questioned. So it's good to have more studies backing this up.

[chasingtides]

Not new information.

I've found, when I visit Occupy in various cities, that people *automatically* assume I'm homeless because I come off younger than I am and also queer as all get out. (One guy in NYC, who's actually a friend now, kept asking, because he figured I was quite young, if I had a solid place to go because most of the other folks didn't.)

The hard part, though, is getting other people to understand. When I was in DC last, a woman with a church group came to see if I wanted to crash at their shelter and a) I had a place to sleep but b) I was like, "Uh, pretty sure your church doesn't want people like me anyway." And I explained that if I had option of Street Sleep or Pray Away The Gay, it'd be the former and she was completely baffled.

/cool story bro

[tabaqui]

It makes me sick to think of a parent literally throwing a kid out of their home because they came out. I think of my daughter, and I cannot imagine ever, ever making her leave on any grounds other than 'no, you and your SO and five dogs can't keep living in your room, get an apartment already'.

But to just...shove her out of the house? Not care where she is that night? Utterly impossible. (She's told me she's bisexual, we've talked about it, she knows i am.)

[redstar826]

I guess my mom briefly toyed with the idea of kicking me out when I first came out, but her coworker talked her down. I was over 18, but was a student with just a part time job, so I would have been screwed (fwiw, she quickly got over it and we've had a good relationship since then, which actually makes me pretty lucky compared to what a lot of people have been through)

[tabaqui]

It's just mind-boggling. It's your *kid*. How does religion or even life-long bigotry trump your kid?

I'm glad you didn't have to go through that.