The LGBT Youth Homelessness Epidemic

Today the Indypendent published a heartbreaking story about the epidemic of LGBT homeless youth on the streets of NYC, where every night hundreds of gay children hustle for money, drugs, or just a warm place to sleep.

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.

Read the gripping story by Jimmy Tobias as he visits the streets, the piers, and the city’s overwhelmed LGBT youth homeless shelters. Tobias also talks to the Ali Forney Center’s Carl Siciliano, who delivers this quote: “I don’t think there are 200 beds in the country for gay youth. 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.”