Queer, Young and Homeless: Real Life on the Streets of Philadelphia

A New Deal?

The money isn’t necessarily there for Foyer of Philadelphia, either. In December, the organization began a pilot night-resource program for 18-to-24-year-old LGBTQ youth, offering 10 beds with a guaranteed stay of 30 nights and the possibility to extend the stay to 60 nights. The program’s underlying goal: After receiving crisis intervention therapy, assistance from on-site case managers, and career and life skills training through structured day programs, youth would move on to long-term stable housing.

“It’s a shoestring budget, and what we’re offering is really basic,” explains executive director Leigh Braden, who works out of a rented space in the Arch Street Presbyterian Church. “But the youth that are staying here know that they’re in a space where they’re not going to be discriminated against.”

You can’t help but wonder if it all might have been different for Scythe if Foyer had been open three years ago. When his father found out he was bisexual, Scythe (who no longer goes by his given name) was forced to leave his Southwest Philadelphia home. After sleeping in Clark Park and going weeks without food—Scythe is not a thief, although he would occasionally break into houses for a warm shower—he checked into a shelter at the age of 19.

“It was too adult for me,” he remembers. “There were people using crack, people having sex in the showers. You slept in a room with hundreds of people. When you get a dose of life at a young age you turn into a different person as opposed to growing up.”

From there, he moved to a shelter for people under 21. “It was more youth-based, but there was this really big emphasis on homophobia,” he says. “I never felt safe around there, never disclosed that I’m bisexual. I remember walking out to the back because I needed something from one of the staff, and some of them were eating outside in the backyard and playing the guess-who’s-gay game.”

Before leaving the shelter, Scythe swallowed an overdose of medication in an attempt to end his life.

Making It Out

Kareem Mims is 25. He now works full time for the Attic Youth Center, where he does training for service providers as well as safe-sex education. The center is a resource he wishes he had had while he was in shelters, foster care and on the streets after being removed from his abusive father.

Initially, Mims felt safe in the first shelter he was placed in—so much so that he confided in one of his social workers that he thought he was gay. He was 15 years old and looking for guidance, but instead, he was outed.

“She told the other boys in the shelter not to get dressed around me, and to be careful around me, because I liked them,” he remembers. “And so I started to get bullied there. I went to her to find services—who can I talk to, who can I communicate with about this?—and she really betrayed me and opened up a world of hate to me.”

So he left.

“For me, being in foster care was the worst experience of my life. It wasn’t supposed to be peachy, I wasn’t supposed to live on the beach, but it was supposed to help,” he says. “After being in foster care, I don’t want kids. I feel like if something was to happen to me—I don’t have any family—then my kids could end up in foster care.”

Mims left the system as soon as he turned 18, and in 2009, he was almost homeless again after caring for his father, who had HIV when he died. (His mother had died earlier of AIDS-related causes.) Mims suspects he still suffers from depression, but these days, he finds himself in a struggle that, for once, seems age-appropriate: planning to pursue a degree in social work.

“To this day, I feel like I raised myself. Maybe I didn’t raise myself right, but I did it myself. I didn’t have that structure that they promise—I don’t want a bunch of ‘mini mes’ running around getting depressed and feeling lonely,” he says. “Some kids will get in trouble—some kids have to get in trouble. But I want to make sure that the trouble they get into is trouble they can get out of.”

Today

Alvarez has enrolled in Community College of Philadelphia with the hopes of going to medical school to find a cure for HIV, and he’s left room in his schedule to volunteer at shelters. He’s also in the process of pursuing a lawsuit against the residential treatment facilities where he grew up for the years of sexual abuse.

Scythe also plans to attend CCP now that he’s working and able to save money for his education. His goal? To open a shelter for LGBT homeless people.