While much attention in past months has been paid to Lake View-based organizations like Howard Brown for its near closure and Equality Illinois for its firing of Rick Garcia, Humboldt Park-based HIV outreach organization Vida/SIDA has been on track to do something no other organization in the Midwest has done.
Vida/SIDA is preparing to open the region's first LGBTQ homeless shelter. If all goes as planned, the shelter will open by August.
"We have the space," said Vida/SIDA Director Juan CalderĂ"n. "It's just a matter of finishing the bureaucracy."
Vida/SIDA will relocate its current Division Street office into a building next door, and convert its three floors into transitional apartments: one floor each for homeless gay men, lesbians and transgender people. The shelter will house 15 young people, for up to two years each.
The project is more than two years in the making. Vida/SIDA had announced the shelter project as a 2010 goal last January, but struggled through fundraising and red tape to make it happen. CalderĂ"n said Vida/SIDA needs the kind of support that many LGBT people give Lake View-based organizations if the project is to succeed. Vida/SIDA raised more than $300,000 for the project with help from local politicians, but it remains $50,000 shy of its goal.
A 2007 report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force calls LGBTQ youth homelessness an "epidemic," and asserted that LGBTQ youth are often violently targeted by straight peers in the shelter system. Several studies in recent years suggest that youth of color, especially transgender youth of color, face homelessness at alarmingly high rates.
"I think that solidarity is very important," said CalderĂ"n. "I would really like to encourage some of the LGBTQ constituents of Chicago to really contribute to some other organizations [than they usually contribute to]."
Vida/SIDA is the only HIV/AIDS outreach organization that specifically serves LGBTQ Latino/as. The organization opened in 1988 to address a lack of culturally competent healthcare for HIV-positive Puerto Ricans. Over the years, Vida/SIDA has expanded to address social, political, and economic issues facing its constituents, but it has also struggled through difficult economic times, most notably in 2004 when it nearly shut down for lack of funds.
Today, the organization is growing. The shelter is not the only ambitious project Vida/SIDA is spearheading this year. In addition, Vida/SIDA is opening an "entrepreneurial incubator" for transgender people and queer women. The Division street storefront will open next month and help participants get trained, certified, and develop business plans. Youth staying in the Vida/SIDA transitional home will have an opportunity to hone their skills as well.
Roberto Sanabria is a board member of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, which oversees Vida/SIDA. He said the incubator is closely-linked to the plan for an LGBTQ shelter because both will be necessary to change the circumstances of homeless youth in the community.
"You don't want to put a band-aid on a problem," he said. "The problem is economic."
Juan CalderĂ"n said that transgender youth of color in Chicago have a particularly difficult time finding work because they face discrimination. CalderĂ"n and Sanabria hope the incubator can provide a more sustainable solution to LGBTQ homelessness.
Youth in the incubator will be able to learn sewing, cosmetology, hair dressing, and other skills based on their interests and talents. They will also learn how to run their own businesses.
"It is a community grassroots approach to develop entrepreneurship in Chicago," said CalderĂ"n.
The incubator, a bright two-room shop which sits less than a block from Vida/SIDA, is currently being renovated. Its first entrepreneurs will be participants from Vida/SIDA's annual Paseo Boricua Female Impersonator Pageant, which spotlights Latino/a transgender women, drag queens and female impersonators.
CalderĂ"n and Sanabria said that many people in the neighborhood are supportive of both the incubator and the transitional housing projects, including current 35th Ward Alderman, Rey ColĂ"n. But the two say the projects' biggest advocate has been Rick Garcia, the now-former political director of Equality Illinois whose recent firing spurred outrage from some in the LGBTQ community. Garcia will be honored by Vida/SIDA at its March 25 fundraiser for the shelter.
CalderĂ"n is hopeful that with Garcia's help, Vida/SIDA can secure the support it needs to finish the shelter and to grow the project further. CalderĂ"n experienced homelessness in Humboldt Park himself at the age of 16. He knows that that Chicago needs more than 15 beds for queer homeless youth. "My goal is to create this at a citywide level," he said. "I want for them to feel like it's their home, that they're not in some sort of institution just because they're homeless."
Vida/SIDA will hold a fundraiser for the transitional housing project on Friday, Feb. 18, 6:30-8 p.m., at Roberto Clemente High School, 1147 N. Western. Tickets are $25. More information on both the February and the March fundraisers can be found at prcc-chgo.org/vidasida.
