Finding safe spaces: addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness

[Kate Miller, Louise Smith and Alex Abramovich pictured outside the YMCA Sprott House in Toronto on Jan. 14, 2016. PHOTO: YMCA of Greater Toronto]

Just before the beginning of Pride weekend in June 2008, Quinto sat down and wrote a letter to *their family. The letter’s purpose was direct: it was a statement penned to let them know that Quinto was officially “coming out” as transgender.

Then 18 years old, Quinto, whose surname has been withheld as a safety precaution, says the time had finally arrived to positively affirm an identity that had been ever-evolving for more than a half decade.

Unfortunately, writing that letter did not bring a feeling of liberation.

“[It] suddenly felt so final, irreversible and permanent,” Quinto says. “I spent the next few days over Pride weekend living with so much anxiety and a constant fear of rejection.”

As it turns out, Quinto’s fears weren’t unfounded. At least one member of their family could not come to terms with the truths that Quinto had laid bare on that piece of paper.

“I got a call [that] Sunday night from my mum asking if I could stay away for a few more days [after Pride weekend] because [some at home] were very upset,” Quinto says. “It wasn’t until mid-September that I could come home. I was suddenly homeless.”

Fearful of attending a shelter, Quinto was fortunate enough to organize a series of short-term housing stopgaps with friends over those ensuing few months. But many put in a similarly volatile situation are not as lucky.

According to the City of Toronto’s most recent Street Needs Assessment survey, published in 2013, more than one in five respondents in shelters identified as LGBTQ. Other studies, by contrast, estimate that LGBTQ youth could make up as many as 40 per cent of the youth homeless population nationwide.

“The connection between coming out and homelessness is very strong, and one that society and policymakers cannot ignore,” says researcher Alex Abramovich, who is an independent scientist at the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and has devoted the last decade of his life to completing his masters and doctoral research on LGBTQ youth homelessness.

“LGBTQ youth are extremely overrepresented among the homeless population and that is a reality that needs to be addressed.”

Whereas the issue of LGBTQ youth homelessness has long been relegated to the margins of government priorities, Abramovich says he sees signs that old attitudes are beginning to change, after nearly a decade of his own single-minded perseverance.

“Too often we see [LGBTQ] youth avoiding the shelter system altogether because they didn’t feel safe or say it felt like a prison,” Abramovich says. “That meant many would, instead, sleep in alleyways, parks or engage in dangerous acts, such as survival sex, just to stay away [from shelters] because of inherent homophobia or transphobia. Thankfully, that is starting to change.”

Within the last two years, for example, he says he is encouraged by the growing number of projects that are doing away with the archaic institutional-like approach of shelters and, instead, designing programs tailored to the specific needs of LGBTQ youth.

One program that embraces this new approach is the YMCA Sprott House in Toronto.

Helped by Toronto city council’s decision to provide $600,000 in funding to ensure that more LGBTQ-specific living spaces were created, Sprott House opened its doors as Canada’s first transitional housing project for LGBTQ youth in February.

Located in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, Sprott House admits LGBTQ youth between the ages of 16 to 24 for a one-year residency period.

Unlike many other traditional shelters, Sprott House offers its select 25 residents a much more independent lifestyle, says Sprott House director Kate Miller.

That means that young people live in their own units and provide their own meals with shared kitchen facilities. In addition, residents also have access to a case manager, an outreach counsellor and multiple connections with other community workers and organizations that can provide LGBTQ youth with long-term support.

“We want [LGBTQ] youth to be able to choose what kind of shelter they want to be in and not be preventing from doing so solely because of their identity,” Miller says. “The potential for a program like this to have an impact and provide respite from the shelter system that isn’t serving them but also to impact the rest of the shelter system to find ways to best serve queer and trans youth.”

As well, a second LGBTQ traditional housing program, run by Egale, is expected to open in late 2016 or early 2017.

In addition to the work being done in Toronto, another jurisdiction that is currently ahead of the curve and demonstrating leadership on the issue of LGBTQ youth homelessness is the province of Alberta.

In 2008, the Alberta government announced it was creating a special agency in order to eliminate homelessness in the province by 2019.

However, despite being embedded within the architecture of the provincial government, the agency struggled to target its services to specialized groups, such as homeless youth, says David French, manager of homeless supports initiatives within the Alberta government’s ministry of human services.

It wasn’t until a separate “youth plan” was created, and a special working group was formed, that ideas specifically targeted to LGBTQ youth began to emerge, he says.

One inventive program born from this structure is the Host Homes program. This program sees LGBTQ youth paired up with a local family who act much like foster parents.

“It’s [an example] of a community response to a community problem,” says Kim Wirth, director of youth housing and shelter with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary. “Host Homes is an option that works particularly well for younger kids because they have stability and one caregiver around all the time.”

As part of the program, families who are interested in welcoming a homeless LGBTQ youth into their home are first thoroughly scrutinized. If, after this intensive process they agree to proceed, they then receive specialized training, and, in most cases, rent payments.

“We want people to understand what they are signing up for and how we work with young people and that the kids are going to be successful and they don’t give up on them the first time they make that mistake,” Wirth says.

In addition to the Host Homes program, Wirth says resources are also being devoted to strengthening a mentorship-based roommate plan, as well as an added emphasis on in-family supports to help resolve household conflict before homelessness occurs.

“What we’ve learned is that a number of scalable responses are needed to address LGBTQ youth homelessness,” says French, who, in partnership with Abramovich, recently submitted a report to the provincial government, which contained six recommendations. All of those suggestions have been adopted — and three are already being implemented, he says.

“There should be more provincial strategies [like in Alberta] to help step in and show that we are serious about solving this problem,” Abramovich says. “It’s a problem that has been going on for too long, but I’m encouraged to see changes happening.”

*As gender queer, defines personal pronouns as “they and them.”