Cast Your Vote to Help Urban Peak Win $10,000 to Benefit Homeless Youth, Many of Them GLBT

Click the pic at left to cast your vote for Alex Vaassen and the Colorado Rapids in Major League Soccer's Community MVP Contest.

If Alex wins, Urban Peak will receive $10,000. Urban Peak provides services to 2,600 homeless youth every year--many of them gay or bisexual.
“With all of the successes around equality that we have seen just in the past year, it is difficult to imagine that today a young person is coming home to his bags packed, and in that most vulnerable moment of finally having come out to his parents, is asked to leave home," says Dan Hanley, Urban Peak's Director of Development and Public Affairs. "40% of the estimated 1.7 million youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBTIQ. At Urban Peak, we provide complete and absolute safety for these youth, most of whom have experienced levels of trauma that would shock you.”

HRC President Chad Griffin - OUT across America

Chad Griffin, the new president of the Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization – begins his tenure with a series of events across the country, starting in Salt Lake City.  From Utah, Chad will travel to San Francisco, his native Arkansas, Omaha, Nebraska, and Baltimore, Maryland for a series of community events and informational meetings.  

 The tour will raise awareness of issues facing LGBT youth.  HRC recently released a new groundbreaking study of LGBT youth and their straight counterparts.

Homeless LGBT youths are victims of culture wars, budget cuts

LGBT youth make up between 20% and 40% of all homeless young people, but recent budget cuts in places such as New York have left many from this demographic to fend for themselves, according to this article. Nonprofit groups that focus on the problem are often unable to serve the growing numbers of young people who need shelter, health care and counseling.

Being a gay teen is risky business

A new study shows that gay teens are more likely to engage in risky behavior - everything from unsafe sex all the way up to suicide - than their straight counterparts.

However, studies also show that gay teens who have access to support groups and programs like The GLBT Community Center of Colorado's Rainbow Alley are much less likely to suffer these kinds of negative behaviors than youth who do not.

Resources for homeless gay youth

A few years ago there were very few resources, studies, or guidelines addressing the issue of LGBTQ youth homelessness.  Things are beginning to change. USICH has compiled a list of online resources that address the statistics, best practices, and networks that are available to help youth in need.

Click Here to View the complete List

USICH on LGBTQ Youth Homelessness

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness recently published several articles pertaining to the issues of gay homeless youth including the following:


LGBTQ Youth Homelessness

 Youth homelessness is a problem that doesn’t fit neatly into a box. The exact number of youth experiencing homelessness is difficult to determine: they are undercounted in national data as unaccompanied youth are often unconnected to services or shelters.  Though they do not have a safe stable place to call home, many wind up “couch surfing” with friends, relatives, or acquaintances.  There does appear to be agreement that twenty to forty percent of youth experiencing homelessness self-identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ), which is disproportionate to the percentage of LGBTQ youth in the general youth population.

Like many homeless youth, LGBTQ youth either runaway or are forced out of the home due to severe family conflict, abuse, neglect, mental health or physical disabilities. They are more at risk once they are homeless for sexual abuse and exploitation.   There is a high incidence of depression, suicide initiations, and other mental health disorders among all youth experiencing homelessness, and chronic physical health conditions are common as are high rates of substance abuse disorders.  Yet, in spite of all this, if you’ve ever had the opportunity to hang out with LGBTQ youth in a drop in center or elsewhere, you know they are energetic, funny, thoughtful teenagers who have the same hopes and dreams as their peers.

Across the country, there are programs aimed at reaching out to and assisting LGBTQ youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness, we highlight two such programs below. There are people and programs across the Federal government working to provide housing and services that will best help LGBTQ youth to become stable enabling them to lead safe, healthy and productive lives.  We provide a list of resources below that help to paint a picture of the difficulties LGBTQ youth encounter in America and the work that is being done around the county to aid these youth in finding a sense of self they can celebrate.

There is more we can and should do to help these young people to safety. Opening Doors: the Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness sets the goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020. Through collaborations between the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and 19 federal agencies, we are working to make sure that all youth, including LGBTQ youth, do not fall through the cracks and that they receive the following:

   1. Low Barrier Housing
   2. Education that helps lead to employment
   3. On-going support services connected to mainstream resources
   4. Independent Living Skills Training
   5. Connections to supportive and trusting adults and a support network

In collaboration with the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs, USICH will draft a framework to specifically address the housing and service needs of youth at risk of or experiencing homelessness. This group will also examine ways that Federal agencies can better collaborate and allow better access to existing resources for those most at risk, including LGBTQ youth.

The New Generation

See the faces and hear the words of Out.com's The New Generation photographed by Kevin Amato.

Young, gay and homeless in L.A.

Homeless youth in Los Angeles are disproportionately LGBT, with one study finding 40% of homeless people in Hollywood younger than 25 identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or questioning, while 5% said they are transgender. 

"If I could be invisible, I would. I feel ashamed to admit that I'm homeless," said one gay homeless person.

Unfair Treatment: Gay teens singled out for punishment in school

Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adolescents are about 40 percent more likely than other teens to receive punishment at the hands of school authorities, police and the courts, according to research published in the January, 2011 issue of Pediatrics and available online today here. 

The analysis, conducted at Yale University, found that the disparities in punishments are not explained by differences in misbehavior. Youth who identified themselves as LGB actually engaged in less violence than their peers, for example. Nonetheless, virtually all types of punishments including school expulsions, arrests, juvenile convictions, adult convictions and especially police stops were more frequently meted out to LGB youth.

For instance, adolescents who self-identified as LGB were about 50 percent more likely to be stopped by the police than other teenagers. Teens who reported feelings of attraction to members of the same sex, regardless of their self-identification, were more likely than other teens to be expelled from school or convicted of crimes as adults. Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual were especially at risk for unequal treatment: they experienced 50 percent more police stops and reported about twice as many arrests and convictions as other girls who had engaged in similar behavior. Although the study did not explore the experiences of transgender youth, anecdotal reports suggest that they are similarly at risk for excessive punishment.

The study is the first to document excessive punishment of LGB youth nationwide. It was based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and included approximately 15,000 middle and high school students who were followed for seven years into early adulthood. Add Health utilized special techniques to ensure participants' privacy: for questions on more sensitive topics, respondents listened to questions through headphones and entered their responses directly onto laptop computers. The study collected details on subjects' sexuality, including feelings of sexual attraction, sexual relationships and self-labeling as LGB. Add Health also surveyed participants regarding how frequently they engaged in a variety of misbehaviors ranging in severity from "lying to parents" to using a weapon.

 The study authors hypothesize that the excessive punishments of LGB youth may reflect authorities' reluctance to consider mitigating factors such as young age or self-defense in determining punishment for LGB youth. Moreover, they note that LGB youth frequently encounter homophobia in the education, healthcare and child welfare systems, and may therefore fail to receive services offered to other young people.

"The painful, even lethal bullying that LGB youth suffer at the hands of their peers has been highlighted by recent tragic episodes. Our numbers indicate that school officials, police and judges, who should be protecting LGB young people, are instead contributing to their victimization," said Kathryn Himmelstein, the study's lead author. She continued, "LGB teens can't thrive if adults single them out for punishment because of their sexual orientation." Himmelstein, who initiated the study while a Yale undergraduate, currently teaches mathematics at a public high school in New York City.
The research was supervised by Dr. Hannah Brückner, a Yale sociologist and nationally recognized expert on adolescent sexuality.

Support for gay youth

In light of the recent spate of anti-gay bullying suicides it is important to know that several national organizations are dedicated to providing support, education and counseling for LGBT and questioning youth, including Campus Pride; Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network; and The Trevor Project.

CAVP launches Queer Youth Violence Prevention Project

The Colorado Anti-Violence Program is excited to be home to a new project focusing on preventing sexual violence within and against LGBTQQ youth communities. The Youth Violence Prevention Project will be examining the root causes of sexual violence in order to create effective and lasting prevention strategies.

Eleanor Dewey was hired in early August as Project Manager to begin the development of this three year program that will be launched in Denver and one other pilot location in Colorado.

With the guidance of a youth driven board, CAVP will implement a community readiness assessment in both pilot locations that will lead to the development of sexual violence prevention strategies. If you are a LGBTQQ youth and are interested in organizing this project, contact Eleanor for details.