December, 2002
by Angelina Malhotra-Singh
San Francisco has long been a destination for young people looking to assert their non-conventional identity. For lesbian and gay youth, The City carries an additional promise: that they will be able to dwell within a strong, proud queer community that will rescue them from their demoralizing and often abusive pasts.
"San Francisco has the reputation for being embracing," says Anne Stanton, executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services, an agency that provides shelter and services for The City's homeless youth. Many queer runaways arrive hoping for acceptance, but find themselves on the street when they can't find a safety net. "Sure, the Castro is a great place to be gay--if you're rich," says Brian, 17, who arrived here from Montana in June. "Otherwise, you can lie on the sidewalk and look at all the rainbow flags."
It's Not Oz
The Castro, prosperous gay hub that it is, has not exactly welcomed the poor lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth who have flocked here in search of their own.Eric Politzer, Director of Youth Programs and Special Projects at the Ark House of Refuge in the Castro, recalls an "intensely negative reaction" from some quarters when his facility was proposed more than two years ago. "There was some very outspoken opposition and some of it was not very kind," Politzer said. "There were NIMBY issues, class issues--much the kind of thing you see in any community when it comes to social services programs."
And though the Ark program is now in the neighborhood, a sole 15-bed shelter can't solve the problem. "I think maybe (the Ark's existence) is doing more bad than good," says Randa, 16, originally from New York. "It's like (the gay community) think if they support the Ark, they're done with their charity. The rest of (us are) someone else's problem."
Wendy Weaver, an Okalahoma transplant and new Ark resident, says she thinks the majority of the Castro community is more concerned about the impact of shelters on their property values, instead of the homeless queer kids. "The gay community here is so comfortable and if they ever had a hard time, they've forgotten about it," she says, her voice tinged with annoyance.
City Slackers
Although no one knows exactly how many homeless LGBTQ youth live in The City---the Mayor's Office of Homelessness's latest census indicated there were 7,305 homeless people in San Francisco, and designated 58 of them as youth--activists and shelter workers say the numbers are on the rise.Mitchell Thompson, who seven years ago helped start the Eureka Valley Teen Program, has seen a slow, steady rise in the number of queer young homeless people in his program. That's partly because kids are coming out at earlier ages. While positive for young people whose families are accepting, the flip side is homelessness. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force estimates that 26 percent of gay youth are thrown out of their homes after coming out.
A big problem in The City's support system is the lack of "front-end" or emergency shelters for these young people, Politzer said. When young people first arrive in The City, they have to choose between the insensitive, often homophobic, general emergency shelters and the streets. And on the streets, it's a slippery slope to high-risk survival behavior such as prostitution or drug use. Thompson estimates the path to decay takes about two weeks, and Stanton agrees: "You quickly get caught up in the street economy in order to survive."
There are also few follow-up services for kids who make it through transitional living programs such as those offered by the Ark House--only to face a brutal economic situation bookended by low wages and a hyper-inflated housing market.
"We came here looking for the chance for a life," Randa said. "If nobody's gonna help us, man, nobody gay or straight, if you're gonna give us the streets--that's death."
Angelina Malhotra-Singh
Originally published in the San Francisco Examiner
