Gay and Homeless; The Numbers to Back It Up

The Empire State Coalition released the findings of their New York City Youth Homelessness Survey the other week. James Bolas, the coalition’s education director, asked me to comment on the findings.

The most surprising resutl is that 28% of surveyed youth identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, and an additional 11% declined to answer the question or were unsure of their sexuality. While it has long been suspected that LGBT youth are disproportionately represented in the homeless population, there has never been a study like this to back up the anecdotal evidence with numbers. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released a 200-page report last January describing homelessness as an epidemic among LGBT youth. There are only 75 shelter beds specifically for LGBT youth in NYC. This is unacceptable given that there are roughly 1,300 LGBT youth out on the streets every night. The survey was conducted in June of 2007, concluding that 3,800 youth are homeless each night in New York City. This number was calculated based on surveying nearly 1,000 homeless or at risk youth.

The Coalition’s work brings the issue of youth homelessness to the forefront, and The City Council will begin hearings on the findings this month. This is huge because the official studies on youth homelessness in NYC were painfully out of date and did not look into reasons for youth homelessness. The Brian Lehrer radio show on WNYC did a half-hour spot on the survey results.  Reuters and The New York Blade also covered the findings. The media coverage brings some of the issues for LGBT homelessness, and homophobia generally, into mainstream conversations. Being queer figures into a complicated set of reasons that youth end up on the streets. Three-fourths of the youth surveyed are people of color, almost 30% spent time in foster care, and over 40% spent time in the juvenile justice system.

Many grassroots organization have been scrambling for LGBT homelessness to be adequately addressed. The Empire State Coalition’s survey will give NYC organizations additional leverage to rally the institutional support and funding to bring services to those hit hardest by homophobia.