LGBT means Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender. While the acronym is largely used as a noun, in fact it refers to different communities that are interrelated by oppression, but are not in fact the same. Gay typically refers to men who are attracted to men, although sometimes it is used as a catch all for the others, but this is declining in use. Lesbian means women attracted to women. Bisexual means people who are attracted to other people regardless of gender. Transgender is an umbrella term that encompasses gender identity and to an extent gender expression. Most people associate transgender with transsexual but in fact transsexuals are a segment of transgender people. In addition to including transsexuals, transgender also includes people who are not the same gender as the sex they were assigned at birth. While some of these people want to switch from either male to female or female to male, many other people just simply want to live differently than from what they were assigned, without going from one part of the gender binary to another. Queer is a word that has a long history, but recently has been reclaimed for use an an umbrella term for sexual orientation. Queer includes man who like men, women who like women, men who like both women and men, men who like non-binary people, women who like non-binary people, and non-binary who like binary and non-binary people. The simplest definition for it is not straight. A similar term for gender identity is gender-queer. Gender-queer means that you don't identify within the male/female binary and are somewhere else, either between them, or somewhere else entirely. These people may prefer use of third gender pronouns like ze/hir instead of he/him. However, to many parents of children just coming out, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation all get conflated. Sexual orientation is who you are romantically, physically and emotionally attracted to. Gender Identity is the internal sense of what gender you are. This can be a sliding scale between male and female, but can also include many different permutations as well as other genders beyond the binary. Gender expression is the way you present yourself to the world. Many stereotypes such as LGBT people are pedophiles, or that it is just a phase, or that is it a choice all get projected onto youth. As a result, 26% of LGBT youth are kicked out of their homes after they come out. While it is estimated that between 2–4% of people are LGBT, between 20-40% of homeless youth are LGBT. This means that an incredibly disproportionate number of LGBT people are being kicked out of their homes over their straight counterparts.
Homelessness is defined as people without a regular dwelling. For many youths, this starts with getting kicked out of their parents homes. For queer youth, this means ending up on the streets when their entire community rejects them. In western countries 75-80% of homeless people are single men. However, for LGBT youth what counts as a 'man' is more tricky. Since many of the homeless people are young, they may have not sorted out their gender identity or gender expression. This means that many trans and gender non conforming people get lumped together with gay and lesbian youths, when in fact they have different needs. For example, Rodney King, who was murdered in his school by another student, has been posthumously called gay. However, Rodney enjoyed wearing girls clothes and shoes. Rodney may have in fact been transgender, but was not at a stage of development where that would have been recognized. As a result, in the media he was called gay, but in reality he may have also been trans. This serves to further marginalize transgender people and makes them invisible. This has serious implications for trans and gender non conforming youth. In many homeless shelters across the country, your doctor assigned birth sex is used to determine where you are placed in homeless shelters. For example, if you are a trans woman, you have to go to the male portion of the homeless shelter. This sets you up for rape and sexual assault. As a result, many trans and gender non conforming people do not go into homeless shelters because they are not allowed to go into the correct space for them. For queer youth this means that they are not only kicked out of their parents homes, but many times are not welcomed into shelters and housing for the homeless population. This has the effect that existing issues are magnified. For example, healthy mental health for queer youth is already a very tenuous thing. Society discriminates against them, their parents don't accept them, and they are bullied at school. For homeless youth, the rates of mental illness are magnified. Being queer and homeless makes them at a high risk for depression, loneliness, and psychosomatic illness. As a result, many of these people try to self medicate to deal with their problems. Consequently, substance abuse is extremely high. 10-20% of homeless youth self-identify as chemically dependent. In addition, risky sexual behavior becomes an increased risk. Many queer youth will turn to sex work to make money for food or drugs. This correlates to high rates of HIV infection. Due to the above factors, many queer homeless youth end up in the juvenile prison system. The prison system sets people up to fail and also exposes them to many risks like sexual assault and rape. The prison system is incredibly homophobic, and guards and staff members will not protect them because they see gay people as wanting sex so it is not rape. In addition, for trans people the prison system can be worse. They are misgendered and forced to go to the wrong prison. This is how trans women end up in male prisons.
In New York City a large homeless shelter for LGBT people is the Ali Forney Center. It is named after Ali Forney who was a homeless gay transgender youth of color who was murdered by an unknown assailant early one morning. Ali was a crack cocaine addict and sex worker. “At the time of his death, Ali was working with staff at Safe Horizon’s Streetwork program as an outreach worker, helping other homeless youth. He was determined to repay the agency, which had helped him get a Social Security card, medical insurance and his GED, by educating his peers. “I became a peer educator because I see so many HIV-infected people on the stroll. Even now, there are people who don’t know how to use condoms.” Despite his outreach work educating less-informed street workers, Ali continued to trick and it was not his only high-risk behavior. He readily admitted to being a drug addict, commenting that his crack cocaine use became a habit “because it eased the degradation and fear of selling himself.” Ali’s honest assessment of his drug use is reflective of the available academic literature, which attests to the prevalence of drug use among LGBT homeless youth and its impact on other risky behaviors. As was the case for Ali, so much of what leads to homelessness among LGBT youth can be traced to experiences at home. He grew up with his single mother in a housing project in a violent area of Brooklyn, “a world of povertyblighted high-rises, beat-up cars, stark store fronts and warehouses.” It was certainly not an easy place for a transgender youth to live. He spent years getting into trouble at school, involved in petty criminal activity, and he was only 13 when he was sent to live in a group home for troubled youth. Ali ran away from the group home within months and spent years bouncing around the foster care system, ultimately abandoning foster placements in favor of the streets. He lived in a number of different homes and was institutionalized at one point after he barricaded himself in a room in response to harassment from other teens. This “blame the victim” attitude is one that a number of service providers said is all too common among agencies working with LGBT homeless youth. Factors just like those in Ali’s life have an influence on intrafamily conflict, which is a primary reason why LGBT youth disproportionately become homeless. When Ali was 13, he began working as a prostitute, making $40 or $60 from each client. He said it made him feel wealthy “like Donald Trump,” though in reality he was barely surviving. His experience reflects that of many homeless LGBT youth who engage in survival sex to secure shelter or a meal. This dizzying spiral of lost opportunities is not an easy one to escape. Ali tried. After living at Streetwork for a year, he, like many other displaced youth, tried to reunite with his family. Research suggests that family involvement in the lives of homeless youth can have a positive impact, but all too often is impossible or simply absent. Ali’s effort lasted no more than a few days and he landed back at the agency. The fact that he identified as transgender and gay was just one of the issues that made reunification harder. Ali’s life and death is a tragic example of what can happen when LGBT youth are forced onto the streets as their only escape from a bad home or shelter environment.”
Ali's story is a common story when describing queer youth homelessness. While this is an extremely dire problem that effects many people, it is not reported much in the mainstream media. Part of this is due to transphobia, homophobia, and racism, but it is also endemic of the nature of mainstream media. Since this is an endemic problem that is always occurring, the stories of these youths lives are not considered newsworthy. However, recently there has been an up-tick in coverage of the protests surrounding budget cuts for homeless shelters and programs that specifically target LGBT youth. In New York City, the group Queer Rising recently did a protest against Gov. Cuomo's budget cuts. As part of the cuts, funding for 100 beds would be removed. There are an estimated 3,800 queer homeless youth in New York City. There are currently only 250 beds for those youth. Activists want 100 beds added each year until the full need is met. Queer rising did a direct action protest where they publicly displayed Cuomo's personal cell phone number on the street, and then got the video of their protest onto a buildings display.
