October 14, 2012 | Read Time: 4 minutes
When Andy B. came out to his parents and told them he felt he should have been born a girl, they beat him up. When he began dressing up as a woman, at age 19, they threatened him and told him he was ugly in women’s clothes. Later, his devout Mormon parents kicked him out of their home in Ogden, Utah.
Andy B., who now presents himself as a woman named Ariana, ended up in a mental hospital because of his suicidal thoughts, then was homeless for three years. (He asked that his last name not be used since he fears it may hinder efforts to rebuild his family relationships.)
With no place to go, Ariana turned to a local group called Ogden OUTreach Resource Center, which offers counseling and other support for gay people who are homeless.
“They made me feel welcome when a lot of people didn’t,” says Ariana, who is now 24 and lives with a partner.
OUTreach is one of dozens of such groups around the country that maintain programs for youths who have no reliable place to sleep because they have been shunned or bullied by their families.
Even as anti-bullying campaigns draw more attention from donors, groups like OUTreach often struggle to gain the attention of grant makers because their services don’t necessarily fit neatly into traditional foundation priorities.
‘Deep Investments’
Advocates for homeless youths say that 2 million to 4 million young people ages 12 to 24 have no place to live and that as many as four in 10 of those homeless youths are lesbian, gay, or bisexual—or transgender, like Ariana. Charities often have a hard time keeping up with the growing numbers.
“We struggle finding emergency-services money for 18- to 24-year-olds,” says Sherilyn Adams, executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services, in San Francisco, a charity that serves all youths, regardless of sexual orientation.
The group sees 4,000 young people each year, some who have grown too old for foster-care programs, others who are addicted to drugs, and still others who lack high-school diplomas and job training. Many are gay or transgender.
“They don’t fit neatly into existing programs that deal with education and employment. In many ways, homeless youth are an invisible population,” says Ms. Adams. Her group and others like it survive largely on government grants, with corporations, foundations, and individual donors filling in gaps.
“It takes long-term and deep investments to change the lives of these youths,” she says. “That’s not always how the philanthropic community funds programs.”
Accepting Families
Seeing the growing need, however, some nonprofits are trying to change that. The True Colors Fund, started five years ago by the singer Cyndi Lauper, her agent, and her manager, focuses on the needs of homeless youths who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, or LGBT, homeless youths.
The group’s Forty to None program uses most of its $600,000 annual budget, which it raises largely from individuals, to educate the public about homelessness among LGBT youths, build networks among groups to strengthen services, and provide advocacy to increase federal support for homeless youths.
The group also promotes family acceptance of gay kids. “Family rejection is the leading cause of LGBT youth homelessness,” says Gregory Lewis, the organization’s leader. “If you’re bullied at school and rejected by your family, the street can look like the only option.”
Early Intervention
One nonprofit, the Family Acceptance Project, is trying to get to families before the breach between parent and child widens.
The 11-year-old group conducts research into why families reject their gay children and then devises intervention strategies that might keep them together. The group has been able to use referral networks it helped set up to reach hundreds of families in crisis.
“We’ve learned a lot about what’s happening in these families,” says Caitlin Ryan, the project’s founder and director. “Many parents are trying to teach their kids how to fit into the world outside. They want to change the young person, often in a way that suits their religious and cultural beliefs. As they do that, they can be oblivious to the helplessness their children are feeling. We teach all sides better ways to communicate all that.”
In the past two years, the organization has received separate $500,000 grants from the California Endowment and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The group will use the money to expand its outreach to realms outside the home, such as churches and schools.
“We need to be more systematic about our approach to this problem,” says Ms. Ryan. “There are organizations out there for these kids, but their beds are always full.”
