Invisible: LGBT Youth Homelessness

Every night, there are thousands of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) young adults across New York City, in shelters, in parks, in subways, in stranger’s homes – 8,000 by conservative estimates, making up as much as 50% of New York City’s homeless youth population. These young people are the emerging face of youth homelessness; their rising numbers across the United States portend a soon-to-be no longer hidden epidemic.

Many homeless LGBT youth are people of color and come from low-income families. Many come from homes marred by instability, conflict, abuse, neglect, or parental drug use. Often, family members assault them and kick them out when they reveal their sexual orientation or gender identity. Having experienced this violent rejection at home, in church, at school, or, in some cases, in foster care, these abandoned youth turn to the streets. Too often, sex work, survival crime, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS and untreated mental illness become a part of everyday life. Animosity toward LGBT youth’s sexual orientation or gender expression at mainstream shelters and programs effectively bars them from receiving the meager services available to homeless youth, services that might move them toward more stable lives. By being homeless in a society that discriminates against LGBT people, these young people are rejected twice: first by their families and communities, and again by the service providers and shelters that are supposed to help and protect them.

Over the past 5 years, as I have photographed the epidemic of LGBT youth homelessness, I have seen these cold facts translated into grim realities. Using Sylvia’s Place, New York City’s only emergency shelter for homeless LGBT youth – whose 30 beds comprise over half of the beds specifically designated for the thousands of homeless young LGBT people in the city – as a home base, I have spent countless hours bearing witness to everyday life, and to intimate moments often hidden from public view: working on “the stroll”; crying at the grave of a mother who left too soon; kissing a new boyfriend; dreaming of a fairytale wedding; sharing moments of tenderness with members of one’s chosen family.

By eschewing exploitative visual stereotypes of homelessness, youth, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and especially gender non-conformity, I believe that these images truthfully show the urgency of their lives.