Community advocates, on Oct. 27, gathered for a workshop about the challenges facing LGBT youth experiencing homelessness.
Experts addressed the issue from a number of perspectives at the meeting, which was held in the offices of the homelessness-advocacy organization All Chicago.
Kim Hunt, executive director of Pride Action Tank, discussed LGBT youth homelessness in a larger socio-economic context, first noting that local advocates do not want to lose organizational momentum now that marriage equality is the law of the land. She explained that many advocates, especially those in national organizations, decamped from several states once same-sex marriage became available.
"Once the marriage fight was won, all those resources left," said Hunt. "We really didn't want that to happen in Illinois."
About 40 percent of youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBT, she added, noting that lack of shelter is just one of myriad problems such youth experience. They will be at greater risk of attempting suicide, experiencing depression or engaging in drug use or unprotected sex. Hunt also explained that about 80 percent of LGBT youth in the state Department of Children and Family Services ( DCFS ) system will experience homelessness.
"We've seen how much our institutions are failing our LGBT young people, and this can carry on their whole lives," said Hunt, who further described local initiatives such as a youth storage locker program, a "tiny homes" design contest and Pride Action Tank's sleep-out event November 20.
Owen Daniel-McCarter, project attorney at Transformative Justice law Project, discussed how socio-cultural and political systems reinforce traditional gender binaries. He emphasized that stakeholders should strive to create safe spaces where youth can identify how they please, and affirm that identification without questioning it.
"To be culturally competent is to understand how these systems work together to keep people down and in poverty," said Daniel-McCarter.
Mike Ziri, director of Public Policy for Equality Illinois, said that non-discrimination laws in Illinois are not enough to ensure that discrimination does not take place, citing a 2013 federal survey showing that landlords were less likely to respond to LGBT couples than straight ones. "States with non-discrimination laws fared no better than states without them," he noted, calling on more extensive federal protections such as the Equality Act. "If you are an Illinoisan who goes to another state...you lose those [anti-discrimination] protections."
The state's budget impasse, he noted, threatens to do great damage to resources that help youth experiencing homelessness. "This is not just a battle of personalities—this is something where real people are hurting," Ziri said.
In her talk, where she focused in large part on establishing linkages to health care, Broadway Youth Center Director Imani Rupert acknowledged that LGBT youths experiencing homelessness face issues that might not arise exclusively from their sexual orientation or gender identity, and that stakeholders must additionally focus on challenges addressing race and class, among others.
"These folks don't yet have a salient 'identity,'" she said. "We have to look at this from [the vantage point of] of an intersectional identity."
