Preventing, Reducing and Ending LGBTQ2S Youth Homelessness: The Need for Targeted Strategies (original) (raw)

Understanding How Policy and Culture Create Oppressive Conditions for LGBTQ2S Youth in the Shelter System

This study examined the experiences that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and 2-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) homeless youth have in shelters and the disjunctures that occur for this population in Toronto’s shelter system. The attitudes and behaviours of shelter workers and management towards LGBTQ2S youth were also explored. A Critical Action Research approach, informed by Critical Ethnography and Institutional Ethnography was employed. Thirty-three people participated in this study in the Greater Toronto Area. The study triangulated data from interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis. The systemic enactment of homophobia, transphobia, and hegemonic masculinity are often normalized in shelters, and create significant barriers to safe, accessible, and supportive services for LGBTQ2S youth. Excessive bureaucratic regulation and the lack of necessary bureaucratic regulation in highly significant areas play a key role in creating the disjunctures that occur for LGBTQ2S youth in shelters.

Outed and outside: the lives of LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness

Around 2 million youth experience homelessness each year, and LGBTQ youth are estimated to make up at least 40 percent of the population of youth experiencing homelessness in the United States, despite being about 5-8 percent of the U.S. youth population. Based upon an 18-month, multi-site ethnographic study and 50 in-depth interviews, this dissertation turns to LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness to document the youth’s views on life before experiencing homelessness as well as their current needs and challenges while navigating the streets and shelters. In this project, I foreground how gender non-conformity and its intersections with sexuality, race, and poverty are the tapestry weaving through many of the young people’s stories and how they understand their experiences of homelessness. I show how the family and other institutions (i.e., schools, child welfare systems, religious communities, and the criminal legal system) discipline, punish, and criminalize the youth’s gender non-conforming presentation and behaviors. The abuse and punishment within these institutions were often linked to the youth’s perceived pathways into homelessness later in life. Once experiencing homelessness, the gender non-conforming LGBTQ youth often faced challenges on the streets because of their ix gender presentation and behaviors, but the LGBTQ youth felt protected and accepted for their gender non-conformity within a specific LGBTQ shelter. At the same time, sexuality was a resource on the streets, but sexuality was regulated in the shelter to the point that many youth at the shelter often got suspended for violating shelter rules. This gender and sexuality paradox kept the youth in this study cycling between the streets and the shelter, but not achieving and maintaining housing stability. Ultimately, this dissertation proffers a new understanding of homelessness and how gender and sexuality shape experiences of poverty and being a poor young LGBTQ person. I contend that as homelessness is about a cultural and moral status position in society, and hence, is about the devaluation of certain lives, then LGBTQ youth homelessness is about demeaning and demoralizing certain gender non-conforming poor LGBTQ youth, especially youth of color, as unworthy and unprotected by society.

LGBTQ Youth Homelessness: Why We Need to Protect Our LGBTQ Youth

LGBT Health, 2022

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth are 120% more likely to be homeless than cisgender and heterosexual youth, yet current federal policies are insufficient and exclude LGBTQ youth. Youth homeless shelters are inadequately equipped to serve LGBTQ homeless youth due to poor funding, a focus on heterosexual or cisgender clients in their programs, and a lack of LGBTQ-friendly policies. Given the pervasiveness of this issue, public health and social policy interventions must be considered. In this perspective, the LGBTQ homeless youth epidemic is introduced and described, past policies are analyzed, and policy recommendations are made.

Serving our youth: The needs and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth experiencing homelessness

This report summarizes findings from the 2014 LGBTQ Homeless Youth Provider Survey, a survey of 138 youth homelessness human service agency providers conducted from March 2014 through June 2014 designed to better understand homelessness among LGBTQ youth. This report updates a similar report based on a survey conducted in 2011 (Durso & Gates, 2012). This new survey was designed to obtain greater detail on the similar and distinct experiences of sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning) and gender minority (transgender) youth experiencing homelessness. Recruitment was focused on agencies whose primary purpose is the provision of services to youth experiencing homelessness.

Youth in Crisis: Recognizing Homelessness in the LGBTQ Community

This paper will address the importance of recognizing the large number of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning /Queer (" LGBTQ ") identifying youth who are at-risk, or less likely to transition successfully into adulthood and become financially independent. More specifically, this paper focuses on homeless LGBTQ youth. It will shed light on community centers and other groups that are advocating for LGBTQ rights, will inform readers of possible housing solutions for LGBTQ youth such as LGBTQ specialized housing, and will give an overview of programs that are aimed at ensuring that youth are safe in their own homes. I will also touch upon a few alternatives that are in the process of being created, such as LGBTQ training for foster families and host families. My main goal in this paper is to describe the importance of supporting the LGBTQ youth community, to urge organizations to complete LGBTQ 101 training to ensure their missions are LGBTQ friendly, and reveal systems that are working to keep LGBTQ youth off the streets and defend them from possible harassment, abuse, and discrimination.

Voices Missed Opportunities: LGBTQ Youth Homelessness in America

The second in a series of Research-to-Impact briefs by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago on understanding and addressing youth homelessness. Missed Opportunities: LGBTQ Youth Homelessness in America highlights research related to the specific experiences of young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) and face homelessness. We learned that, compared to heterosexual and nontransgender youth, LGBTQ youth are disproportionately represented among the nearly 4.2 million youth and young adults in America who experienced some form of homelessness during a 12-month period. They also face a higher risk of early death and other adversities. On the positive side, this research points to actionable opportunities to better meet the needs of LGBTQ young people in our collective efforts to end youth homelessness.

Coming Out to the Streets: LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness

Coming Out to the Streets: LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness, 2020

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth are disproportionately represented in the U.S. youth homelessness population. In Coming Out to the Streets, Brandon Andrew Robinson examines their lives. Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in central Texas, Coming Out to the Streets looks into the LGBTQ youth's lives before they experience homelessness—within their families, schools, and other institutions—and later when they navigate the streets, deal with police, and access shelters and other services. Through this documentation, Brandon Andrew Robinson shows how poverty and racial inequality shape the ways that the LGBTQ youth negotiate their gender and sexuality before and while they are experiencing homelessness. To address LGBTQ youth homelessness, Robinson contends that solutions must move beyond blaming families for rejecting their child. In highlighting the voices of the LGBTQ youth, Robinson calls for queer and trans liberation through systemic change.

Child Welfare Systems and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness: Gender Segregation, Instability, and Intersectionality

This study documents the child welfare experiences of youth who are LGBTQ and their perspectives on how these experiences influenced their housing instability and homelessness. Youth detailed incidents of gender segregation, stigmatization, isolation, and institutionalization in child welfare systems that they linked to their gender expression and sexuality, which often intersected with being a youth of color. The youth described these incidents as contributing to multiple placements and shaping why they experienced homelessness.