The Indypendent e-news
Across the United States, thousands of kids are kicked out of their homes each year for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT ). In some cases, homophobic families dump them on the streets like litter. In other homes, kids run away in fear of retribution or as a result of ridicule.
They have nowhere to go. And the problem grows worse as American youth are “coming out” at increasingly early ages.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 575,000 to 1.6 million homeless and runaway youth are living on the streets from New York City to Los Angeles. Of these, between 20 and 40 percent are LGBT , according to the 2007 seminal study, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness” by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).
The study highlights a particularly dismal fact: Given that between 3 percent and 5 percent of the U.S. population identifies as lesbian, gay or bisexual, it is clear that LGBT youth experience homelessness at a hugely disproportionate rate. LGBT youth homelessness is a hidden reality of 21st-century America. The stories of despair, high HIV rates and street murders continue to be under-reported and unaddressed. I wanted to know who these kids were and how they survived in New York City. That is what took me to Sylvia’s Place.
BELOW-GROUND HAVEN
Nestled in the heart of Chelsea is a small safe haven on Eighth Avenue. A rusty iron gate closed behind me as I stepped into Sylvia’s Place on a recent Monday evening. Located in the basement of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, the space was filled with clutter: old mail, hand-me-down clothes, boxes of donated food and cold metal chairs. There were no windows, but harsh lights kept it bright. A single bathroom provided a semblance of privacy. Brazil, a young transgender woman, saw me eyeing it. “If you go in there, don’t sit down,” she said. The shelter is named for Sylvia Rivera, the legendary transgender woman said to have thrown the high heel that sparked the Stonewall riots 40 years ago.
Sylvia’s Place is one of three organizations in New York City that provides overnight shelter exclusively for LGBT homeless youth. Twenty-five to 30 kids sleep on the cold cement floor at Sylvia’s Place every night, packed together and exposed to roaches. Still, it is better than shelters for straight kids, where LGBT youth often face verbal and physical abuse. It is better than the street.
Hip-hop music blared from the speakers. A few volunteers were cooking dinner in a makeshift kitchen. Diggy, from the Bronx, danced flamboyantly in the middle of the floor, belting out song lyrics. A chubby teenager with bright purple hair was drunk and sobbing in the corner. “I want to get clean,” he cried softly, as his friend stood out on the sidewalk, calling to him through the front door, pressuring him to take another swig. Aqua Starr, the newest kid to take up residence at the shelter, was stoned and eating cold turkey stuffing and pizza by himself, leaning on a row of cabinets and eyeing me from a distance.
I sat down next to Chris Collazo, the 25- year-old drop-in coordinator at Sylvia’s.
“If you want the kids to open up, show empathy,” Collazo told me. “Then you won’t be able to get them to stop talking.”
Across the room Damien Corallo slouched in a chair, looking grim. Somebody had stolen his iPod. “Things are always getting stolen here,” he said. I sat down next to him and, just as Collazo had said, once I got him talking, he did not want to stop. When he was a kid, his father was sent to jail and his mother sent him and his two siblings from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York City to live with his aunt. His brother was gay and Damien, who is transgender, had been dressing like a boy as long as he could remember.
“One day our aunt told us she didn’t want any faggots in the house. And we figured out that she had given our rights over to the state. So we left,” Corallo said. “I’ve lived in 32 group homes or foster homes. I’ve lived in shelters, halfway houses, safety houses. I’ve been into lock-up, stuck in residentials. I have been in every kind of home. I went to juvie for drugs. I used to inject drugs and snort coke. I was in for about a year. It was not friendly. It was a Missouri state jail and then I went to rehab.”
Corallo said he stayed in a group home on Long Island. Three years ago he moved to Sylvia’s, where he’s been ever since. On three occasions, he’s been beaten in what he described as “gay bashings.” He’s been called a faggot and a freak more times than he would like to remember. Somewhere along the line he contracted HIV, which has since turned into AIDS. He has attempted suicide more than once, and he relapsed, too — he’s got track marks up and down his arms and a chronic twitch. He is using crystal methamphetamines and heroin again. He said he wants to break the habit, but “I could never stay clean in this situation.” Corallo is 18 years old.
My first evening at Sylvia’s ended with a speech from T.T. Wilson, a 23 year old with purple hair who had just been suspended from the shelter for three days because she had been in a street fight outside. “At the end of the day, y’all can go home to y’all’s motherfuckin’ houses and y’all can sleep in your own fuckin’ bed regardless if y’all strugglin’ with your bills or not!” she screamed at the staff. “Y’all have a fuckin’ home. I don’t. I don’t have anywhere to go. So what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?!”
A REFUGE ON THE RIVER
Pier 45, at the west end of Christopher Street, is the epicenter of LGBT youth life, especially for kids of color who travel from neighborhoods around the city. Tucked in the Hudson River Park on the edge of New York’s expensive and trendy Greenwich Village, it is where many youth gather during the day to pass the time, meet friends and organize around issues of gentrification, youth and LGBT rights. It is something like a home.
“This is a place that folks come to feel safe. You can meet other people and start to feel comfortable in your own skin,” said Desire Marshall, a 25-year-old organizer with FIERCE , a group that advocates for LGBT youth of color. “There are few places you can go when you’re young and there are even fewer places you can go when you’re queer.” The pier is one of them, but it too is threatened.
In 2001, the Hudson River Park Trust — a public-private partnership that governs the park — closed Pier 45 for renovation. The LGBT youth that use the pier were not consulted about the plans and many feared that they would have no place to congregate on a revamped, gentrified pier.
Their fears were well founded. When the pier was re-opened in 2003, it had changed dramatically.
“For two years they had nowhere to go,” said Marshall. “Now they reopen it with a curfew that wasn’t here before, with a police presence that wasn’t here, with park enforcement patrol that wasn’t here, and food that LGBTQ youth and low-income people cannot afford. They are pushing out a huge part of the community that utilizes this space.” FIERCE’s fight to protect Pier 45 from exclusionary development continues today as the Hudson River Park fishes around for more proposals to improve what it calls “quality of life” along the river.
THE RIVERSIDE STROLL
While Pier 45 is safe during the day, at night it turns into something entirely different: a center of commerce where sex workers and drug dealers, many of them homeless and queer, come to make money, to “get coin.” They call it “the stroll.”
One afternoon Wilson invited me to come with her to see the stroll. She’d been back from her suspension for at least a week and we’d already spent a good deal of time together at Sylvia’s Place. She told me that she grew up in a well-off conservative community in North Carolina. When she came out to her family about her transgender identity, however, a conflict developed with her mother. Eventually, she left North Carolina for New York City two years ago.
“I know my mommy likes me, I know she loves me, but I was never peaceful,” Wilson said. “My family don’t accept me for being gay. They don’t accept gay people period.”
When Wilson came to New York, she found a new family — four trusted friends. As the oldest among them, she called them her children and they called her their mother. LGBT homeless youth frequently piece together families for protection and support on the streets. Corallo had one as well. “Me and my friends developed a kind of homeless runaway family,” he said. “When we didn’t have a place to go we would all sleep together at Union Square at night.”
I joined Wilson and her family on the pier one late rainy Saturday night to watch the stroll. Teenagers slowly walked up and down the sidewalks, strutting, making fleeting eye contact to draw in potential customers. Many of them were transgender, most were youth of color.
The occasional catcall and rowdy laughter blended in with the rain spattering the sidewalk and the buzz of cars on the West Side Highway. “If you watch closely, you’ll start to see people disappearing into the bathrooms,” Wilson said. To our left, a drug dealer in a baggy purple shirt stood on a corner with two others, hollering at people and peddling dime bags and joints for dollars.
Wilson explained that survival sex fuels the stroll. Many of the kids do it to eat or because they need a place to stay for the night and a stranger’s bed is better than a cold, wet bench at Union Square. Others do it because they are saving up for a sex change operation or to feed a drug habit. According to the 2007 NGLTF report, LGBT homeless youth are three times more likely to engage in survival sex than their heterosexual homeless peers.
ON THE FRONTLINES
Sylvia’s youth live on the frontlines of the battle against homophobia, gender discrimination, racism, class — and they have the scars to prove it.
Carl Siciliano knows the depths of these wounds. As the executive director of the Ali Forney Center (AFC), an organization that provides emergency and transitional housing to LGBT homeless youth in New York City, he is a witness to this struggle.
“I don’t think there is any other situation where so much oppression and persecution and cruelty is happening to people because they’re gay,” Siciliano said as we drove to Brooklyn to see a pair of AFC apartments. “These kids are bearing the brunt of homophobia in our society.” Siciliano has been working with LGTB youth since the mid-1990s. “Every couple of months one of our kids would get murdered on the streets,” Siciliano said. “They were just in this ground zero of danger.” Ali Forney, a gay and transgender youth and the namesake of Siciliano’s organization, was killed in 1997. He was found on Harlem’s 135th early one winter morning with a bullet in his head.
With the help of a committed staff, Siciliano has turned a project that began in 2002 into the largest organization of its kind in the nation. His program offers counseling and mentoring services as well as a network of eight apartments that house 48 youth on any given night.
And it works. Every year his organization weans a new cohort of kids off drugs and sends a handful to college. And they receive a little more funding. But the waiting list is long. The program is successful, but it is simply not enough.
As Siciliano himself admits, the gay rights movement and its allies are failing to address the problem. “I don’t think there are 200 beds in the country for gay youth,” he says. “If there are more than 1,000 gay youth on the streets in New York, there has got to be at least 20,000 in the country. And that is a conservative estimate. So 200 beds for 20,000 kids? Obviously we are not stepping up to the plate.”
Siciliano and politicians like New York City Councilmember Lewis Fidler (D-Brooklyn) — who have spearheaded the effort to get city funding for programs that serve LGBT homeless youth — have ideas on how to solve the crisis. They propose two broad solutions: First, combat homophobia. Second, while homophobia still exists, generate the political will to care for kids who fall prey to it.
A study cited in the NGLTF report found that 50 percent of young gay males experienced a negative reaction from their parents when they came out and 26 percent were told to leave home. In addition, one third of all LGBT youth are assaulted by a parent or another family member after disclosing their sexual orientation.
Along with homophobia, class and poverty are part of the problem. “People from affluent backgrounds have more options and resources,” Sicilian said. “They face the same rejection, but when half of your extended family is already living under one roof with you, so close to the street anyway, there is a lot less of a buffer zone.”
The confluence of homophobia and poverty puts kids on the streets and keeps them there.
“I have stood on the steps and declared war on homelessness. I have done as much as I can to raise awareness,” Fidler said. “And still, Brittany [Spears] can climb into a cab without underwear and get three pages in the paper, but I can’t get three columns on kids who are couch surfing, who are selling their bodies to survive, who are exposed to unspeakable horrors.”
Fidler believes the only way to truly address the issue is through a mass social movement. “My belief is that if people knew that on the streets of this city in this day there are children by the hundreds who are sleeping on the streets, if this problem were known, then the public would create the political will to solve it.”
Meanwhile, however, young people like Damien Corallo will remain on the margins. “A lot of us feel rejected, like there is no place for us,” Corallo said. “We’re the bottom of the barrel.”
Comments
This is truly a travesty.
I truely believe this is real!
“People from affluent backgrounds have more options and resources,” Sicilian said. “They face the same rejection, but when half of your extended family is already living under one roof with you, so close to the street anyway, there is a lot less of a buffer zone.”
God save our LGBT community of children from the streets and it's DL.
The coverage and representation of Sylvia's Place is distorted, poorly researched and frankly, unforgivably fallacious and vitriolic. This is a shameful embarrassment to objective journalism that aspires to veracity and a raise in consciousness of one of the country's most vulnerable populations. Your only redemption is to remove your name or find the courage to contact the Program Director or myself.
James Vining
Social Worker
Sylvia's Place
Jamysclair@aol.com
To: Jamysclair@aol.com
Sent: Sat, Sep 19, 2009 2:52 am
Subject: Sylvia's Place
Dear James,
I am the reporter from The Indypendent who spent about a month researching th e article on LGBT homeless youth, which you found so dissatisfying. Please, tell me, what exactly are your concerns with my coverage? Having spent a good deal of time at Sylvia's Place, I feel that my description of the space and the program are extremely accurate.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Tobias
Dear Mr. Tobias,
To say that I am dissatisfied with your article would be a gross understatement. Let me clarify and contextualize my feelings for you and your readers....I am appalled by your slanderous and misguided representation of Sylvia's Place! And here's why:
You fail to mention that Sylvia's Place offers comprehensive case management, individual, group and family therapy, substance abuse treatment and referrals, free medical services, free HIV testing, court advocacy, weekly photo, creative writing, resume building and art workshops, new clothing (not just "hand me downs"), showers, laundry and home cooked meals on a daily basis, and insuring that clients secure various ID's and entitlements.
Nowhere in your article do you state the tremendous disparity between state and city funding of Ali Forney Center (funded by DOHMH, 4 HOPWA contracts, Ryan White Care ACt and Sylvia's (which currently receives no federal funding).
Your description of Ali Forney as an organization with a "successful program" that "works" due in part to a "committed staff" in comparison to Sylvia's environment being composed a "makeshift kitchen", "harsh lights" and "a cold cement floor" erroneously suggests that our space willfully austere or unsuitable for our clients and that our staff lacks dedication and commitment. On the contrary, Sylvia's Place is the only safe and supporti ve, emergency homeless shelter in NYC with 24 hour supervision that LGBT youth in crisis can access immediately without the hurdles of long waiting lists or red tape.
The clients' experiences of Sylvia's that you share in your article are exclusively negative and not properly contexualized. While I am realistic enough to admit that some our youth have negative responses, this is in no way due to our callous or vindictive rejection. We discharge and ban clients who present a threat to the safety of the space as a whole or who can not abide by our rules, procedures and regulations. Further, while some of our clients have serious substance abuse problems, we consistently employ a harm reduction model (through individual and group modalities) and refer any person who wants help to the treatment program of their choice. In both scenarios, you merely present the client's perception of the program rather than offering the rationale of the staff's decisions and supports that are available for individual needs. All of the aforementioned information is glaringly absent in your report.
Where are the positive narratives and strengths of the clients at Sylvia's? Did you consciously omit the stories of many of the youth who are succeeding in finding part time or full time work, enrolling in GED programs, becoming peer leaders, attending substance abuse treatment programs, making progress in therapy, and who move out once they've secured a better home? What about those=2 0clients who sustain undying motivation and resilience, the willingness to ask for help and who are grateful to have a safe place to stay in the face of catastrophe?
You violated the ethics of social justice and journalism by failing to check the accuracy of your facts with the previous Social Worker, Program Director or the Reverend at MCCNY in order to insure that your article was impartial and gave a balanced forum to the diversity of our youth and the full scope of our services.
In short, your piece is an irresponsible exploitation of Sylvia's Place and its youth. I hope one day the youth will forgive you. I never will.
James Vining
Social Worker
Sylvia's Place
Mr. Vining,
I personally think that you would be glad to receive any PR for your program.
I seriously doubt that you get allot of press if any.
It would be my hope/wish that when readers peruse the article, they would see
just the opposite of what you described and realize that there is a huge problem
in our community nationwide. When their heart is touched and a tear comes to their
eye,(as it did with myself), then hopefully they will find out more about the places
mentioned and perhaps find some way to help.
I in no way want to diminish your message or voice. I know having worked in Non Profits,
that it is a continuous up hill battle and I thank god that they are people like you
on the frontlines, helping in anyway possible.
But I personally would like to thank Mr. Tobias for shedding light on this matter,
(even if "harsh lights" are used for illumination).
tears around downing my face. I have no words in me right now.
I think its an important issue, and the journalist did do some real on the ground investigation which is commendable. However, I agree that staff should have been interviewed at Sylvia's Place, or residents with varied perspectives. the picture painted was quite bad, and might deter potential queer youth from going there and using its services. I agree with Mr. Vining that the reporter should have given more details about the breadth of the services available. Its easy to tear on poor nonprofits and call them crappy and dysfunctional, especially next to the well funded ones. Its more difficult to give a well rounded look at these institutions.
I used to volunteer at Sylvia's Place. The work they do is totally needed, but their space is frankly dangerous. The basement room probably violates every fire code in the city and the James Vining left out the fact that Sylvia's Place can't get federal or local funding largely because they cannot pass consistently pass L & I inspections given the dilapidated state of their shelter. All that is besides the point tho. Our community needs to help these kids so they don't have to sleep in basement rooms or on the streets...
Mr. Vinning-
With all due respect, I think you are missing the point of this article.
This article is to spotlight the plight of homeless LGBT, and it does so brilliantly. I just happened to pick up a copy of this paper in the lobby of the Kraine Theater, and largely due to this particular article, it is now my new favorite publication. I was literally fighting back sobs on the subway. I was moved to take action! I was inspired to rally for support! Had this article focused on the success stories, I wouldn’t be as incited as I am. I wouldn’t think of applying to volunteer at your shelter, or another like it. I wouldn’t be thinking and planning about how to raise money for your organization. I would just be thinking, “Well done. I guess that is that. No more work to be done there.”
The fact that your program is grossly underfunded is apparent in this article. I for one understand that you are all doing the best that you can and I am very thankful for the service and programs that Sylvia's Place provides to these poor, under-represented and grossly disregarded youths.
No, this article does not provide a great deal of copy for you to use in your next grant proposal, it wasn’t meant to, but I believe it certainly will help your development efforts.
Thank you again for all that you do. I hope to be in touch with you again in the near future.
Mr. Tobias-
Allow me to congratulate you on this riveting, soul-shattering piece. Thank you for giving these children a voice. Thank you for sharing their stories. I often see them around the Village. I even recognize T.T. The next time I see her, I hope she’ll allow me to buy her a slice of pizza.
I read the article on my way back from work and it appealed to me instantly. Its amongst the finest
i have read in a long time. I really acknowledge writer's effort and the fact that it was presented in such a beautiful way. We all point fingers at God if anything goes wrong in our life, but i think articles like these make us realize that he has been too kind to us.
In simple words I Loved It and i pledge to donate some part of my salary every month for benefit of these children.
I am a long term health care professional and i have a number of comments to make here.
Having had a number of experiences with reporters/journalists writing articles about programs where I have worked , I know that the articles are always skewed by the reporter to make a point and they are never comprehensive. However I do THINK that Mr. Tobias was trying to raise consciousness here and that is certainlly needed. I am embarrassed to say that although I had some knowledge, I was not fully aware of the enormity of the problem, and I'm in the field. The statistics are mind boggling, and a great deal of information is easy to obtain when you become intetrested.
I do support Mr Vining however, in protest as to the disparity between the discussion of Sylvia's place and Ali Forney. What makes them (Ali Forney) so successful and why, there is no specific detail, what does their space look like and how did they obtain it. ? How incredibly insulting to the dedicated staff at Sylvia's Place to say that Ali Forney has a committed staff
( implying that they don't).
I had knowledge of Sylvia's Place , but had not actually been there until recently. In a small Gallery , staff and members of the congregation had contributed art work for sale as a fund raising project. (They do some sort of fund raiser every few months.) I was then able to see the physical space. And I am positive that the program has NOT been offered an alternative, large, bright, clean, comfortable space by anyone , and turned it down and said no we'll stay here.
My reaction was very different though. Rather than be negative about what wasn't, I thought, how INCREDIBLE that they can do everything they do, in this tiny all -in- one space. There is an office for individual work and one big room for eating, sleeping, socializing etc. I have never experienced , anywhere, a program that does so much with so little. I will also re-stress the point that they are an EMERGENCY resource, " SylviaâÂÂs Place is the only safe and supporti ve, emergency homeless shelter in NYC with 24 hour supervision that LGBT youth in crisis can access immediately without the hurdles of long waiting lists or red tape."
As to rules, suspensions, etc. and clients unhappy with those consequences, no program on earth can exist without rules and bounderies and clients are always informed as to what they are for that specific program. Whether it be a shelter, a drug rehab program, or other programs, clients need to learn that to live in society we must follow rules and if not there are consequences. These are survival lessons and no client is every happy with this.
If there were no rules, there would be chaos, other clients would be endanged and staff would have no time to do any structured counseling, projects, groups.
I will conclude with an appeal.
There are many worthy causes and we obviously cannot respond to all of them BUT, this one is in our own backyard. So please, if your heart was touched, DO something. Petition your political representatives to increase funding. Call Sylvia's Place and ask what you can do to help. I know they need more cots ( not everyone sleeps on the floor. ) I'm sure they also need blankets, toiletries, Thanksgiving is coming. Maybe someone could solicit friends, or co-workers and volunteer to go in and paint the room, or do a major cleaning, or contribute some lamps or used furniture. there are infinite possibilities. Please don't read, cry, and then get on with your life. We all make this a better world by what we do as individuals, by who we touch on a daily basis.
Hi,
I have heard of our youths being dumped in the streets between 1 to 2 million. But, I was in awe when I read this article that youths are being dumped in the streets because of their sexual orientation. I have a teenage granddaughter who was in the streets for two years. I prayed and cried every night for her return. She was given back to me and her mother in July. Since, then, she is in school and we are starting a new relationship. I would like to give relationship to your organization working with your organization and even share my own life experiences. I don't have much money. However, I would like to give back through volunteer work if that is permitted. I can be reached at 347-866-0099. I would like to help and give back.
My father threw me out when i was 18 and i lost a lot of my family members because of being homosexual....i dated a few times and my ex let me stay with them when i was around 19 or 20 until i found Sylvia's place...i can remember that day it was when the Hudson River had the plane go in the water....and when i entered Sylvia's place i felt like i was at home with the same people just like me LGBTQ...Everyday was a new day for me hanging out in times square, taking the subway or bus to and going to different groups...listening to every story that my family LGBTQ could share some relating to me with me being a runaway and no family to go too....i also went to the Ali Forney Center occasionally...but there is one thing i can remember being bashed by a transgender as i walking a few blocks down from Sylvia's place i was walking with this guy who i thought loved me and that transgender came up to me out of no where and bashed me in the eye. In tears i told one of the coordinators and instead of them calling an ambulance i walked 40 blocks to the hospital....that boy i loved came with me...but i had enough i had to transition my life...the Ali Forney Center sent me back to my state Connecticut and i ended up in a shelter with my lover we went to Florida thinking things be better till i knew his true colors he ran off after all i did to help him transition his life and even spent hours at an Orlando Hospital thinking he has appendicitis....but now at age 24 i am working as a CNA...Went back to college have a roof over my head and am in a successful relationship with my boyfriend of 3 years this August...Sylvia's place is a wonderful place for at risk youth of LGBTQ where no where to go....but remember this no matter your age the shelter is temporary there is hope to transitioning your lives. For those at Sylvia's place keep on keeping keep the faith and have hope that your lives can become better.
My father threw me out when i was 18 and i lost a lot of my family members because of being homosexual....i dated a few times and my ex let me stay with them when i was around 19 or 20 until i found Sylvia's place...i can remember that day it was when the Hudson River had the plane go in the water....and when i entered Sylvia's place i felt like i was at home with the same people just like me LGBTQ...Everyday was a new day for me hanging out in times square, taking the subway or bus to and going to different groups...listening to every story that my family LGBTQ could share some relating to me with me being a runaway and no family to go too....i also went to the Ali Forney Center occasionally...but there is one thing i can remember being bashed by a transgender as i walking a few blocks down from Sylvia's place i was walking with this guy who i thought loved me and that transgender came up to me out of no where and bashed me in the eye. In tears i told one of the coordinators and instead of them calling an ambulance i walked 40 blocks to the hospital....that boy i loved came with me...but i had enough i had to transition my life...the Ali Forney Center sent me back to my state Connecticut and i ended up in a shelter with my lover we went to Florida thinking things be better till i knew his true colors he ran off after all i did to help him transition his life and even spent hours at an Orlando Hospital thinking he has appendicitis....but now at age 24 i am working as a CNA...Went back to college have a roof over my head and am in a successful relationship with my boyfriend of 3 years this August...Sylvia's place is a wonderful place for at risk youth of LGBTQ where no where to go....but remember this no matter your age the shelter is temporary there is hope to transitioning your lives. For those at Sylvia's place keep on keeping keep the faith and have hope that your lives can become better.
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