what we're hoping to do with this film is reshape the narrative around youth homelessness to help the broader society and us as body politic understand what the problems are and what the solutions need to look like to meaningfully address those problems The way that we hope to do this in this project is to use the stories and voices of the lived experts that we have the privilege of working with, those who have solved these problems within their own lives and can use that to advise those of us searching for systemic solutions Because what those of us in academia and legislative bodies know whether or not this is a part of the public discord is that the solutions are relatively simple.

I guess it depends how you measure it.

Like people living in the shelter?

Shelter Couch, Couch surfing, or on the street.

40,000?

I don't.

Is that a high number?

Bigger than that?

80,000?

I came out as queer in 1998, when I was 16.

This was shortly after Matthew Shepard was murdered and found hanging on a fence to die Even before I came out, I was consistently harassed in school for being too manly and too queer.

And when I came out, young men tried to drive me off the edges of roads banged me up whenever they passed me in the halls and even threatened to kill me one time when I was at the dining table and I had spilled a cup of Kool Aid on the carpet of our townhouse and my my mom in I guess both.

I guess anger and just outburst hit me hard enough that I fell off the wooden chair that I was sitting on at the counter and I got a black eye.

and I remember having to go to school the following days and, you know, let them know whatever I fell off my bike or what have you excuse that I could make up.

Whether it was this or beatings with the belts, hangers, extension cord.

It kind of progressed into something that was kind of like a bad dream after a while.

In my household, it was my older sister and my younger sister and me, the middle child.

And my older sister got the worst of it.

She was the oldest.

The first child didn't really understand how to handle all that, and then it was me.

I had to deal with, you know, covering my ears, and my sister was punished or worrying that it'd be in my own hand and most of the times it would feel like we just had each other.

And so we would rely on each other a lot.

I was, when I turned 18, it was 18 and six days.

My mother sent me off to me.

I'm an adult then, but obviously your mother still has to say.

So I was I was 18 and six days, and I went to North Carolina to be with my grandmother Me and my grandmother just clashed bang headss, so I got a job.

It ended up me going to extended family members' houses in North Carolina.

And then one day, my mother, I called my mother because I'm always obviously wanting to go back home.

I'm homesick.

She says I could come home And I had a job, and this was at a point that I had a job that now I was paying rent and extended extended family members, friends and friends.

I was staying at a place in a house.

I had a room.

And my mother said I could come back home.

And so the one that owned the house that was renting me the room, my just extended family member's boyfriend significant, other bought me a ticket.

When I was in Texas, I got a text from my mother Well, after texting her 10, 20 times, she wasn't anwering.

She was like, "No, you can't stay here.

I changed my mind.

This was whenever I'm already halfway to Texas from North Carolina.

She was like, I jumped the gun.

I never said that, basically denying She said that.

So when I got back to California, I stopped in Bakersfield a little bit before where I'm from And then I was homlesser since then.

It wasn't my decision to leave.

Unfortunately, my mother chose my stepfather.

Granted, he was a good man.

He raised me very well, but it wasn't my decision.

I was defending my mom constantly from getting abused by him.

and then one day, I threatened him with a steak knife.

I did not hurt him, but when you're raised with addicts and they want what they want, they will make up anything.

So my dad, may he rest in peace.

I'm not angry at him no more.

He told them that I had two butcher knives and I cut his finger.

Then my mom set me up.

She said, I could come get my Social Security card and birth certificate.

He had an order of protection against me.

He had my mother under full control.

And I got arrested again.

So this seventh time.

and that's when I got emancipated and forced out my house around 18 or 19, I should say.

I started to explore my gender identity more, right?

So I started to know, I started to get familiar with words like Being what it meant to be trans and transgender.

So for me, around the time, I felt like I wanted to transition but I felt like I couldn't transition at home because I felt like I thought I wouldn't be accepted and I also didn't feel comfortable transitioning around my family.

So when I started to kind of, when I was living with my mom with my mom, I kind of started to experience some form of homelessness.

Although I had a place to stay.

What I would do is that I would be out all night.. Like I would leave my mom would leave her house at like nine to take my brothers to school So basically, I would come home at nine, be home from like 9 to 5, sleep, rest, shower, and then from five o'clock on, I will be out in the streets Up until the morning because I didn't feel comfortable going home because I already knew I wanted to transition So eventually, when I turned, when I turned 20, 19 - 20, that's when I kind of made the decision that I wanted to transition and I wanted to leave my home.

So around that time I decided to leave home.

and actually, that's when I began to experience homelessness It's funny because I laugh about it, and I started calling it my journey through homelessness, not my journey to homelessness, was where I grew up.

I'm originally from Chester, Massachusetts.

It's an area that is predominantly small.

And because I am quite large, I am six foot seven, I didn't fit in that population for a variety of reasons.

But my biggest aspiration was to be be a performer, and in that area, being black and relatively queer presenting just was not part of the community mold.

So I knew I wasn't going to stay there for quite a long amount of time.

An opportunity eventually presented itself in 2015 to audition for my dream school in New York.

I got in.

What school was that?

The American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

Also know.

Yeah, uh huh.

The American Musical and Dramatic Academy And before I officially accepted, I said I was gonna take a two weeks sabbatical in New York just to experience it, know what it's like before I moved there.

And unfortunately, as I was in New York, a letter from the school got to my parents first before I could present it to them.

And when I came back, things exploded.

They wanted me to find a practical career, which apparently being a struggling artist was not on their docket for their adopted child, and they said that I, A, either need to find a practical career and get help in reference to my queer identity, or I could leave.

And that was their ultimatum.

In that moment, I knew that I didn't have a choice.

I wasn't going to stay, because why?

Why stay?

Why be miserable?

Stay at a desk job for years.

And instead, I took the last $40 in my bank account and got a one way ticket to New York with a backpack, my binder full of sheet music.

And at that time, and I will never have one again, an Android phone filled with the Wicked sound track And I didn't look back.

if there is nothing else taken away from this film, the most important message is that these are not just numbers, these are people.

There needs to be more humanity in our common understanding of youth homelessness as a problem These young people are young people first and unhoused people second I became homeless at 18.

Can you tell us why?

My parents and I, growing up, we really didn't get along.

very well.

We used to bump heads a lot.

So I figured instead of being in an environment where I felt like I couldn't grow spiritually and emotionally, I decided to break out of that and decided to be on my own.

Not really thinking that the world was going to be a lot harder than what it is.

So I, um I decided to venture out on my own, and I didn't really have anywhere to go.

I ended up losing my job at the time because I couldn't really keep up up with it.

So I just remember one day, um.. What was your job?

I was working at Johnny Rockets as a waiter.

And it just got to a point where I couldn't really keep up with making sure that I was getting there, because I didn't have any way to, like clean myself so I wasn't really trying to be around anybody so I decided to basically leave that job alone.

And I remember sleeping in Twin Donuts when one of my exes from high school had seen me and said, hey, do you need somewhere to go?

And she brought me out here into the city and that's where I got in to Covenant House.

Where were you?

Where were you?

Oh, I was in Queens.

I was out in Queens and I ended up making it out here to Covenant House.

And which is where I met a lot of the clients here in new alternatives.

before new alternatives even existed.

So I was in Covenant House making friends and by word of mouth, I ended up hearing about Kate being a counselor at Sylvia's place.

So I ended up having a spot at Sylvia's one night because I needed an emergency spot and she allowed me to stay there and then from there, she told me about the new program that she was starting so I ended up being one of the very first clients there, so that's how I got in contact with Kate for the first time.

Yesterday it was my day off, and I was at home, and a client called me, and they're not a client who normally calls me on my day off, so I thought, uh oh, and I picked up, and they were calling to tell me that one of our other clients who was someone they had dated for a long time was killed.. He had been outside of Deli in Harlem and was jumped by three people and stabbed to death.

and it's particularly frustrating.

I have a folder of letters he wrote me from prison and he'd gotten out and gotten sober and finally got an apartment and wound up being killed a few blocks from his apartment.

you know, and it's just.

an indication of how many obstacles the young people we work with are up against.

You know, I mean, if you look at our memory wall, here, you know, there are about 40 young people up here that we've lost over the years And of them, I'd say AIDS is is a very common cause, which should not even be a thing in this day and age, but when you get the intersection of poverty, addiction, mental illness, and homelessness, it becomes very difficult for people to keep on track with their treatmet and they wind up some of them progressing to AIDS and sometimes dying.

But we also have had a number of drug related deaths, especially that's picking up recently as more and more drugs are contaminated with things like fentanyl and silazine.

and then we also have had, you know, several suicides.

But then also a number of violent, you know, like violent crimes I had one person killed by their roommate at a at a shelter.

I had someone else killed by the police, trans woman whose throat was slit.

So that definitely happens.

You know, people don't necessarily realize that.

And then the other thing our young people often die of is medical causes that if you have access, should not kill you, you know, asthma, diabetes, a dental infection, that went septic, heart failure, you know, things that are treatable, but not if you don't have access to care.

And, you know, and it's just a situation that's going to get worse if the current administration gets its way because they're trying to take away the little bit of access that people do have Although co-opted for pop culture spaces and overutilized, trauma in clinical spaces is broadly defined as an emotional response to a chronic stressor or event that occurs and ends up shaping behavior, actions, cognition and broad understanding of self First of all, where does the trauma take place?

Is it trauma at the original home that causes somebody to become homeless?

Is it the trauma subsequent to becoming homeless?

So as that I had mentioned before, trauma is the type of thing that can lead to long lasting negative impacts upon someone's life.

And when you have an individual at that very foundational stage in their lives where their psyche is developing.

Their personality is developing.

A lot of things are just kind of taking shape.

They're trying to understand who they are in this world.

They're trying to understand what the world is made of, and then for them then to be subjected to trauma and homelessness, for them to be subjected to, let's say, abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and then subsequently to that, homelessness, that's like a double whammy on one's life.

Homelessness during that time of at that time in one's life is just very, very harmful, very, very harmful.

As I mentioned before, it impacts one's long-standing sense of being safe being secure, being confident and more oneself, one's self esteem, all of this is wrapped into the impact of homelessness and trauma upon one's life.

It's crazy because I don't really ever remember of joys It's always you gotta do it.

It's not about what can happen in the future.

It's about what where we're going to sleep that moment, where we're going to eat, where we're going to shower I know it's stupid, but what if we meet somebody and we like them, oh, I don't have a place to live.

I can't even brush my teeth in the morning.

I don't think when we're in that situation, we really think of hope Maybe once in a blue would think, maybe I get that one home or that one job, but it's all about survival when you're in that situation You don't feel hope you feel scared because you don't know what's gonna happen next or where you're gonna wake up up Definitely where you're gonna wake up.

Sometimes you do things for a Bed as a teenager I've changed drastically, but I'm not ashamed Maybe a little uncomfortable but when you're 16 / 17 and don't have a nice shower and you smell all day cause you're roaming the streets sometimes sleeping with somebody gets you a nice warm bed.

I can't believe I said that.

So you can imagine I was really relieved when I got an acceptance letter to NYU and a funding package to make it possible for me to come to this queer mecca, and I felt like I had finally made it past this terrifying time and into the beginning of the rest of my life, where I didn't have to huddle or cower anymore, where I could actually pursue my dreams and try to make the world a better place.

And my first year, I made a lot of friends I finally could feel the embrace of a really welcoming and queer trans-affirming community.

And then, in the second year, September 11th happened, and that was the first time I was ever displaced from my home.

I couldn't go back to my apartment for some weeks below Canal Street, and I was coming out as trans, and the two things combined made it really difficult for me to focus and do well in my schooling So as my grades began to tank, I dropped out.

And I started working as a fire escape scraper and a house painter, and then I went on tour with a band because I was a young person, and that's what we do After coming back from tour, I was behind on rent to my friends, but I got a part time job.

I was excited about, and I was hopeful that I would continue to build up my life and pay my friends back and be on to the next thing.

But then in December, our heat stopped working, and we asked the landlord to fix it, they wouldn't, and it was cold, and we knew it would be many, many months before the landlord likely fixed it.

And my friends who had jobs that paid more steadily felt like they would rather get out of the lease and find a new apartment with heat than stay inthe one that we were in.

But I was behind on rent and didn't have enough for the next apartment.

So I packed all my things into a friend's car and drove it to a storage locker in Manhattan.

There, I piled all my things in as neatly as I could, stacking the books up like they were a chair and putting a change of clothes in the corner that I could access and rotate out And every night I would return to the storage locker in January when it was bitter cold One of the things that our lived experts have taught us throughout our time making this film is that although everyone's story is unique in terms of the adversity that they face and the challenges that they overcome, there are many of the same roots laid down in their origin stories When it came to me growing up, I had a lot of struggles with my mental health, particularly around, you know, my environment with my family.

I had to deal with a lot of abuse, a lot of uncertainty, and even with my gender identity, I didn't know if I would ever find a place where I felt safe most of the time.

It often came to the point where I looked for respite outside of my home or where what was supposed to feel like my home.

And in doing so, I found myself on my own homeless.

in the middle of COVID during June of 2020. during June of 2020. thankfully for for me, between A relationship, between my sister and the organization Covenant House and a quick Google search, I wasable to obtain a bed the same night I cried on the phone to my boss that I wouldn't be able to come in because I just found myself homeless.

thankfully, when I arrived at Covenant House, they offered me kindness, a ride to work the following morning, a bed, and a place to wash my clothes and rest my head at night.

The first couple nights were rough, I was scared, I didn't know what to expect, and scared, I didn't know what to expect, and I had all different types of emotions about what I would do next, what this meant for me, and what this meant for my future, if this was the end.

But at the same time, I felt relief weight off my shoulders, I finally felt free to figure out who I was without the weight of expectations, societal pressures, or judgment on my shoulders.

And being at Covenent House and being well welcomed with open arms allowed me to finally ask myself those questions in a safe environment.

I tried to sleep in the streets, but I didn't feel comfortable and that's when I wind up Covenant House with no Social Security card, no birth certificate, no ID.

Damn near nothing.

It's just been a very big roller coaster I don't even know if it's being brave no more.

It's been the process of working on myself and holding it down so long.

and I think that I'm getting away over it, but then this happens.

there's also the thing over move with?

I believe it's just moving with.

I don't even call myself a PTSD survivor.

I call myself a PTSD warrior.

I don't give up, I keep going.

I beat statistics.

According to statistics, I'm supposed to be a drug addict with multiple kids.

I live in Jersey in a house with a backyard.

I'm so blessed.

The most remarkable thing about the uninformed opinion that people choose to sleep on the street in New York City is that that is often something that is a result of safety concerns about the alternative shelter services.

There are many young people who have made the attempts to engage with the supports as they exist, the systems as they exist, and they are not safe when they do so What's more disturbing is that often people are, and this is something that New York City is working to evolve at this time with the recent opening of the first shelter for people that identify as nonbinary.

However shelter systems are divided by single adult shelter systems are divided by gender.

And so you are often assigned to the shelter that as policy dictates, that is assigned to your sex at birth.

Now, that is problematic for, let's say, a young trans woman who will be assigned to live in an all male shelter.

And that person will likely be fighting for their safety every day that they reside there.

The biggest misconception that we see is that homelessness is a choice and that people are choosing to sleep outside.

Let's talk about the reality in D.C.

where I live.

The rent is 23.

The average rent for a one bedroom apartment is $2,300.

Now, for people like Donald Trump, that may feel like pocket change, but for most people, that's too much money to afford each month People live outside in D.C.

because the rents are too high the shelters are full or don't meet their needs.

Unfortunately, there is a persistent myth that homelessness is the result of something that an individua did, but nothing could be further from the truth.

I've never met anyone living outside who said When I was little, I dreamed of growing up to become homeless.

Nobody wants to live outside.

There's just nowhere else for people to go.

And we have to switch the prevailing narrative and belief that homelessness is an individual choice and focus the fact that homelessness is caused by a lack of housing thatpeople can afford in this country Oh, I have a discussion at home just about every other day.

I think someone of authority The powers that be allowed it To get out of control.

control?

And now, as we see, both parties are at fault.

It shouldn't be this way.

I believe it starts at the system.

A lot of people that's homeless prefer to be on the streets because the shelters aren't safe, so I believe it starts there.

It's not.

not a jail where people could go in, be helping, shelter food, bed, but they shouldn't be extorted, robbed, or raped or whatever, in case may be, So it starts at the whoever runs the shelter system.

starts there whether you're red, blue, or independent, it starts there.

That's my thoughts and opinions Its systemic solutions, anchored in trauma informed and anti oppressive values, like housing first, that puts the humanity of the individual first.

It asks, what would you need?

in order to be able to get that job, to apply for that school program, to move forward with your goals and your life, and for almost anybody that is unhoused, the first answer is not job training.

The first answer is not fill in the blank.

It's a roof over their head We developed housing first after years of working in the traditional homeless service system.

The traditional homeless service system says it's kind of based on what people see on the street and what your intuition might tell you, but it turns out that there are some counerintuitive things going on.

What your intuition tells you when you walk by a person who's on the street, especially if they've been on the street for a while, is that this person needs help.

They need psychiatric help.

They need medical treatment.

They need just the help to get them to themselves together in order to get ready for housing.

And so we've built not only in this country, but in most places that deal with homelessness, a system that is designed to treat people to get them ready for housing, housing preparedness or a housing readiness system.

And that works for some people but as we can see, many people still remain on the streets after years of effort of trying to get into that system.

And that's when we decided we needed another alternative to the usual get to psychiatric treatment, get clean and sober, and then you'll get into housing.

We needed another approach.

It wasn't clear what approach that we would take.

But what we came up with was the idea that we're not going to solve this thing by being experts and deciding for the person who's on the street, what is the best course of action for them?

That already existed.

There were all kinds of programs where people had to follow the rules.

We decided we were going to engage the person in participating in the solution to to their problems actively, right from the start.

And so we began to ask people, people that ordinarily, you wouldn't think would be able to answer even.

What is it that you need most?

And how can we help you?

What's the best way to help you?

And inevitably, I mean, the obvious, you know, is always obvious after you discover it.

People said, I need a place to live.

I need to save, secure place to live.

That's what I need.

Yes, I know I have mental health and addiction issues.

I've had them for years, but right now, my most urgent need is housing Hence, we would bring people into housing immediately off the street.

And that's how housing first got got started by providing people, housing right away, immediately off the street.

I was able and what is considered to be a very unusual situation to get millions of dollars, actually, from the National Institute of Mental Health to do this qualitative research with people from Housing First, who live in housing first apartments here in New York City and we did a comparison.

It wasn't a randomized trial, but we did a comparison group of people who were in what we call the staircase or the shelter model, treatment first, it's sometimes called versus housing first So we did interviews with them, as I mentioned before.

We had cameras, we followed them in their lives.

They allowed us to do shadow interviews.

And I think the main areas we were interested in is because housing first was originally developed for people with a serious mental illness That could be schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression.

So that was our starting point.

Almost all of them, I would say, close to 80% were also using drugs, illicit drugs, street drugs, of some kind.

And many of them had started that since they became homeless, because they were living on the street and the availability of drugs.

So the people we were interviewing had really long and very difficult, to say the least traumatic histories.

They were not coming from middle or upper middle class homes, where they descended into homelessness.

They often came more often than not came from poverty.

Large families, few resources.

And we don't know why some people end up going homeless out of that huge mass of Americans who live in poverty.

It's just a matter of the lack of housing and when their descent into homelessness takes place.

So much of our research published is about substance use after being housed Mental illness after being housed.

Plans for the future, social relationships, all of those aspects of what is life like after you get an apartment with few requirements, including the practice of what's known as harm reduction which means that they keep the apartment even if they're using drugs, it's not used as a way to coerce them into treatment.

But they are given ample services and I want to emphasize that because today we're hearing a lot of criticisms of housing first, coming from people that don't really understand how it works, but harm reduction refers to a practice where you view the problem during the HIV/AIDS era, it came into being in terms of unsafe sex.

For our individuals, it was mainly around using drugs and not having drug use to be a reason for eviction.

So Pathway staff worked with them closely, 24/7.

They worked with landlords closely, 24/7.

And I think for all of these reasons, the quantitative studies, which I really wasn't involved in, found amazingly consistent results.

About 80% of these folks were housed stably at the end of a year And not only that, but they were generally leading more stable lives over time, we found in our research that they had been in housing for some times many years, and they talked about quitting using drugs, crack, alcohol, whatever.

So we published about that, about how they were able to take care of their substance use on their own, even though they had lots of different treatments available to them I'm probably going to be a our Unique perspective because I'm A librarian and I work for the New York Public Library So I Now I work out of South B and I'm actually like one of the librarian.

But previously I was working in the Bronx.

go And my branch was kind of located between, like, three different homeless shelters.

Okay.

So like, like a men's one, a women's one and a family shelter.

So I have a lot of like, really direct experiences, I think, with, like, the full gamut of homelessness in terms of like the family who's, like, just moved in there and is, like figuring stuff out and it's found the library is a resource, right to the people who are clearly having a mental health crisis come in with, like, hygiene issues.

And it's always tricky to kind of balance the, like, looking out for other patrons, but also wanting to health.

And then the mental health crises, obviously, it's tricky because you worry about your safety a little bit, and usually I don't.

you know, I take the subway all the time.

I I always feel bad when I look away, but it's always a little bit like, you don't know what you're supposed to do.

You know what I mean?

But I know it feels dehumanizing.

So I think, I obviously find the homeless situation here really upsetting.

And it's crazy because I know that in New York City, it's better than in other places.

Like, I've done some trainings about how we have the laws here that are that guarantee people housing.

Right.

But it seems like the way the system is set up with shelters just doesn't actually meet the needs very effectively And so I have a lot of compassion for it.

I think I'm doing work that I' hopefully helps, you know, in the way that I can.

But it's.

You do every now and then worry about your safety, but overall, I don't.

You know what I mean?

Someone has to be in a really extreme crisis for me to actually be concerned Um, at first I was like couch surfing, so I was staying at like my partner's home um, and then eventually I learned that I needed support, although I had a roof over my head that wasn't enough.

I needed to get, you know, money.

I needed to get food.

I needed to get other resources.

So I was I had an internship at the Museum of Modern Art, the MOMA, and they did presented this video on this agency, which was the Ali Forney Center, and there was another young person that received services there.

And so I had looked, I had saw the video and I was like, oh my God, this is the answer to my prayers because they were like, oh, this feels like a family like environment.

We help you get employment.

We'll help you get resources That you need.

We'll help you with clothing, food, shelter, basically like a one-stop shop and that's when I was like, oh, that's the place that I need to go.

And so that was the place where the first, kind of like my first stop in this in the homelessness system was the Ali Forney Center It's like, you know, choosing to have diabetes or choosing to have high blood pressure.

No one chooses these things, and it's the same way I would not consider it a choice in terms of one's life style, I would consider it that if this is how someone is, and this is what happens in one's life.

It just kind of flows with the flows with the individual's identity.

Now, a lot of parents, paternal figures, and those who an individual may live with may see it as a matter of choice, and so that enrages them, but you have to consider, who would choose to be rejected by society or choose to live in a way that maybe the majority of society would then reject them?

So I wouldn't look at it so much as a choice, but I I think it's embracing one's identity, one's being So I can envision how.

And I do know that many of the individuals who do wind up on the streets, unfortunately, who have been rejected by family are rejected because of the idea that, oh, this is some kind of choice.

And in you know, of course, there are there are religious aspects to it.

There are all kinds of societal issues that lead to a person being rejected by their family, but it still is a rejection.

And that in and of itself is pretty painful, very hurtful, very, very traumatic.

Whereas your family is not accepting you because of the person that you are Unfortunately, I began my work at the door the week following the election of Donald Trump.

And it was only a couple months into my time there that then, unfortunately, we lost large swaths of our funding big contracts that we had in different departments, specifically in our legal department, where we support unaccompanied minors that are seeking special juvenile status in in a legal capacity, a special juvenile refugee status to give them a secure status in this country that is safe while they pursue the legal route of getting what they essentially came here seeking, which is the opportunity for growth in a safe space, in a safe country, in safe, in safe communities to achieve their goals to grow in whatever their personal goals are for themselves, for their families.

And we lost funding to be able to do that in large part.

And that impacted the organization's work writ large.

And we had to shuffle and it has really largely impacted the way that the way that we're able to do our work in the scope of our work very significantly.

And that has adjusted what I imagined this work being.

When I was imagining a world where I would come to the door and access to services in terms of health and mental health, housing supports, all of these things, I thought that these are things that had the potential to be expanding and being enriched and being emboldened and strengthened And instead, we find ourselves in a space where scope is decreasing and access is even harder to come by and consistently under siege.

And so so much of this work that I was hoping to be able to do here is now needing to be taken to the fight needs to be taken to different levels, or so it feels.

So my work has been doing a lot more of the advocacy work, writing testimony, and now wanting to take the fight to the higher levels so that we can do good and effective work in the direct service spaces.

I mean, age, from what I've been told, it's been from 18 to 25, then it went from 18 to 30.

So, basically, if you' if you're 29, you're about to turn 30, we can help you, like, you know, find other places, but you would somewhat be eligible, somewhat not.

clients, we get all different ones.

We normally get the ones that other shelters don't want or can't handle or deal with, and it is true, you know?

Why do you say that is?

Because Because if they can't handle someone who's having a mental crisis and they don't know how to understand it or deal with it, you know, oh, well, let's just tell them they have to leave and throw them out.

alternatives, you get all sorts of people.

If you don't turn anybody away?

No.

I mean, we do our best to help them or refer them to places, but we try not to have to turn them away, at least not a way to where we can't find them somewhere or help them, you know, get to where they need to go.

You know, we may not be able, if you're 30, we'll probably try to help you find up a place or point you in the right direction on what to do.

The homeless in this crisis in general is rooted in our housing crisis here in the city of New York, and obviously, the people that are most vulnerable, that can afford the least are the ones that are going to suffer the most.

And in this city, we've done very little to really try to address that in in a thoughtful and creative way.

We kind of move through the same systems of the past to try to address a crisis as that's only getting worse because of those decisions.

So, obviously, young people, employment, schooling, access to resources, is very limited across the board, and they're the people that are going to have the hardest time to try to find housing or be housed in New York City.

This city has done a terrible job at building enough housing, having supply that makes it so that the apartments that are available are not so expensive.

So just on a macro level, the housing crisis here is really making the youth homelessness crisis a lot worse.

And the city doesn't have a lot of empathy, and when it lacks empathy, we don't put in place laws, initiatives, and resources to address the crisis in a way that really looks to help the most vulnerable, instead of trying to warehouse and hide the problems that we have in our city.

Practice of peace started shelter in Jamaica Queens for single males, asylum seekers, ages 18 to about 50, 66.

60s.

We were able to assist this community because of the need of the city.

They needed to house all of these migrants.

It was overwhelmingly crazy in Texas, and as you know, we all know in the media, everybody was being dispersed everywhere.

We serviced these men for about seven, eight months One point, the city didn't even give us 24 hour notice and we got the phone call saying, you're turning into a family with children's shelter.

The dilemma was, but the big question was, where are these men going?

And the answer that we obtained from DHS was simply, you're going to serve them, a transfer notice, buses are going to come Saturday morning and that's all the information we have for you at the moment.

The family with children were also from the migrants population.

We serve my youngest.

Actually, I saw babies being born in the facility, literally in the facility, in the hallway of the facility.

And we we um so from newborns all the way to seniors, we service them again for, I'm going to say about a year and a half.

And we got another call from DHS, letting us know that first of all, because of the new administration and this whole talk of ice and mass deportations and things like that, we got an initial meeting like back in January of this year, letting us know that it was going to be an integration of migrants and American citizens.

Unfortunately, we were not fully prepared as to, you know, how to manage two two populations at the same time, and we just did the best we could New York City has a number of youth service centers, whether that's youth drop in centers, youth, shelter services, and other things in the periphery of youth homelessness that are all extremely meaningful in terms of meeting their needs for them to be able to ultimately become stably housed and to become healthy, functioning members of their own community and within themselves Yes, so our runaway homeless who drop in cent is basically a temporary stay.

It is also a safe space for young people to be in either throughout the day or through the night.

The things about a drop in centers in general is that sometimes shelters don't have a lot of beds.

So it is technically a temporary placement instead of a long term placement, where we provide basic needs services, will provide food, laundry services, shower services, and also ultimately also a resting room, The thing about our drop in is that and drop - ins general throughout the New York City in the entire RHY continuum is that not a lot of young people like to go into shelters for many reasons, right?

So shelter is more of a stable place where they have a bed, as opposed to a drop in center, is basically just for them to to be there for the day or for the night, right?

So they're either staying on a chair or on a cot or a couch and just really finding more of a way to be off the streets.

So and you know, some things about shelters, a lot of reasons why a lot of young people don't like to go into shelters for many reasons is, you know, it's not safe, right?

I think with the New York City shelter system in general, they get also.

the feeling of experiencing more sense of trauma in the shelter system, especially, especially with their homeless youth population.

They've been involved already in a lot of systems.

So being a part of the homeless system in general also can bring up a lot of more traumatic experiences.

It was controversial.

People didn't believe our results.

Right from the first year of doing this.

We housed 50 people, and we had an 84% housing retention rate, which was mind blowing to us We didn't know it would work that well.

People were slow to believe it.

We ended up doing a lot of studies., randomized control trials, you know, true clinical trials.

And what we found was that when you use the housing first approach compared to the treatment first aproach, approach or the staircase model, as we have begun to call it the housing retention rate and stability was about 80%, 85% for housing first and 35 to 40% for the staircase model or the treatment first It was easier for people to get into treatment and to do better if they were housed first.

So that data then became, you know, we published that and then people began to become curious and the thing began to take root and other communities wanted to explore how to do this program.

to explore how to do this program.

I start by saying it really works in the sense of what was put forward in randomized clinical trials.

They did this in New York, and then Canada mounted a nationwide housing first test to see if it really works.

They did it in five cities, it cost $110 million.

It was, of course, bilingual, and each city had several thousand people that they would either randomly assign to service as usual, which is a shelterter or drop in center.

And then the alternative was housing first, an apartment of your own.

The findings, after three or four years, I mean, it was so clear that the two groups were differentiated, and the people in the apartments were doing really well So under these controlled research conditions, the data were just coming in, and there was no alternative.

The only alternative were people who said, "But that's wrong.

You know, it's kind of a moral moral warning that you just can't do this thing.

You're rewarding bad behavior.

The comeback to that, as work done by Dennis Culhain at the University of Pennsylvania and others who have found that if you really cost out what it costs to have the rent all the 24 seven services, it's still less expensive than leaving a person on the street.

Why?

Because people living on the street have to go to the emergency room often They are arrested and spend nights in jail.

They have serious problems with diabetes, a lot of physical illnesses They may even have lost an arm or a leg, because being outside when people talk about homelessness, they say, oh, it's because they emptied the mental hospitals.

Well, they did, but that was starting in the '60s, and housing first didn't start.

until the early '90s.

So that's not really a convincing explanation.

And then it's the drug use, or the drugs or this or that.

But people have been using drugs for a long time and they didn't become homeless.

And people have mental illnesses and they don't become homeless.

So it really wasn't a clear explanation.

It made people feel sort of better about it.

And then President Reagan comes along, and this, for me, was the watershed change in policy.

He cut back public housing expenditures.

He drastically cut the availability, what were then called Section 8, housing vouchers, where you would get a rental voucher that would pay for your rent, and you might pay 30% of any income that you had.

But it was profound by the late '80s that this lack of federal government involvement in housing, and not only that, but he privatized it.

So not only were you seeing a shrinkage in affordable housing, or tearing down all the old SROs and putting up really nice condos.

So what you saw as private developers basically took over the housing situation in this country.

The government kind of got out of the business of housing We come from a country that we don't have as many homeless people as us here.

And what do you think that is?

I mean, I think that here, like, healthcare, I think that is an issue that you don't have, like, healthcare for everybody, that it's free, so maybe people who don't have the money cannot pay, and then it's, like, a circle where they are in poverty, they can pay healthcare, then they get in drugs or something like that.

And I don't know, because I haven't studied the issue, but it's like my thoughts.

So I think that for New York, like having so many homeless people, it's not nice because it's hard to see.

I mean, I'm sure that it's harder for them to live, but I think that something should be done, I don't know what, something from the government.

I will I will honestly say it's it's been it's been an experience not just like my life failing experience as being a trans person, but living in America in general is such an interesting thing and it has been for the last couple years Especially with right now it feels like all like people are looking at me because I'm different from how they think normal should be and like I'm a problem.

I' I'm a threat to their to their view on one on like the standard of life.

And it's it's harrowing at times.

But let me ask you this.

What do you think the concept of normal is?

Imagine holding yourself to a standard that somebody else way before your time set in their belief that that has to be how someone has to example themselves, how they have to portray themselves to the world, or else they are weird, sticking to some kind of mandated standard like structure of a standard as normal sounds pretty weird to me.

I'd rather be myself as I'm pretty sure everybody else really wants to be, but apparently that's not allowed in America anymore.

We are trying to get the progressive movement to care about homelessness.

Unfortunately, people that were often politically allied with have also internalized this mythth, this false myth, that homelessness is a choice.

So people are talking about the housing crisis, but they're not focused on the people most impacted by the housing crisis, which is people who live outside We are also seeing the Trump administration use homelessness as a wedge issue to further his authoritarian take over over of D.C and of the country.

We need to solve homelessness.

I want people to care about homelessness not just like, it should I want people to care about homelessness because homeless people are people and they deserve housing full stop.

That's not enough for most people.

So people should care about homelessness because what starts with homeless folks in D.C.

is going to spread to everybody across the country.

They're going to attack trans folks, are coming up after migrants.

They're coming after everyone who is not a white, straight cis Christian man.

It might start with homeless folks migrants and trans folks, but it's coming for everybody.

So I need the progressive movement to wake up and recognize that their failure to focus on homelessness has enabled this wedge issue to creep in.

And we need real action.

Fortunately, we know what those actions are.

First thing cities can do.

Don't throw people in jail for being homeless.

There is template legislation that we have called the Gloria Johnson Act that restores the rights that the Supreme Court gutted.

That has been introduced in cities and states across the country.

And a similar version of the Housing Not Handcuffs Act was introduced in in Congress several months ago.

We also need cities and the federal government to fund housing that works We just learned that the National Guard in D.C.

is being used to pick up trash near the White House.

Now, the Guard deployment in D.C.

costs about a million dollars a day for taxpayers.

So D.C taxpayers have spent over $15 million on the D.C Guard being deployed here.

That could have solved homelessness for hundreds of people.

That could have provided hundreds of children with healthcare.

That could have provided hundreds of veterans with support services, but instead we're wasting it on using the military to pick up trash.

It's clear that Donald Trump is permanent military presence in our cities.

He wants us to get used to a military occupation to squash descent.

And this is all textbook fascism.

We have the money to solve homelessness.

We don't have the power and we don't have the political will to actually do what's needed.

And it's going to take all of us coming together to fight for for housing, because housing is foundational for health, for education, for safety, for justice Housing is foundational for everything.

We need housing that people can afford in this country.

Like, I was born and raised here.

It's always been pretty bad.

And I think it's just continues to get worse to get worse before.

because obviously, like the price of housing is just ridiculous.

And I think it's gone to a point where, like, not only is there homelessness that you can see on the streets, but there's also, like, displacement of Native New Yorkers en masse to like outside areas, such as, like, further, further outer burrows and eventually just other states the concentration of wealth.

Like, I don't know, I work for, like, a large corporate law firm, and you could, like, the second I walked in there, I started to understand a little bit more about, like, how much like, the wealthiest of us have, and, like, how much impact they have on decisions that impact the distribution of that wealth.

in New York City currently, we require people to like, let me, let me wildly oversimplify this.

We require We require people to get a job, to get an apartment.

But what are the kinds of things that you need to even prepare for an interview?

A shower to wash your body clothing that you pick out of your closet that is clean, smells good, looks good, presents well.

You need all of these things that you can't have without a home.

And therefore, a job is that much more out of reach and becomes one of the biggest barriers to you, actually.

And so it becomes the Cyclical nature of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, and it keeps serves to keep people in their oppressed state in perpetuity was it was a really weird home dynamic.

My mother and her significant others always caused problems in the house.

and so I had.

But what do you have?

Yeah, yeah.

So it was it was by by extension, I had problems with my mother.

And then obviously, everybody has problems with each other' cause it's toxic, it's a toxic home environment.

So Yeah, so it was that was more so why I left because I'm 18, but obviously she's like, you're gonna go live with your grandmother.

I still I'm still going to enlist to my mother.

So that's how that happened.

She set me off to be with my grandmother.

And I more so chose to because I thought it would be better than what I was living there, how I was living there.

So she changed her mind Basically, she just denied she said it.

She told me she changed her mind, but if she tells anybody else, she denies she said it.

I don't like to say bad things about my mother.

But that that's not the reason I'm homeless.

Now, obviously, homelessness in itself causes problems.

People tell you, why can't you get out of homelessness?

Well, I don't have this mother's house that I could stay at and you know what I'm saying?

Like a normal person would or somebody other than myself.

So it's, yeah, that's the one thing that I could say is where my homelessness started.

a simple Google search.

you could find, I think, the Stanford study.

It's literally, I think, less than less than 98% of people will become homeless due to drug use.

It's just like me, most people become homeless are around drugs because homeless people do.

It's cycle from a long ago.

You know what I'm saying?

Homeless people are, it's the poor man, and poor men do drugs.

But you go to I'm to an extent.

So, so, yeah, I'm just, I'm ranting off.

But, yeah, I became, I started to do drugs after homelessness.

And if you ask anybody, you talk to anybody, they didn't start doing drugs.

Most people don' don't do drugs They didn't work kicked out because they did drugs.

They became homeless because they got into a car crash.

And or during COVID they became homeless or their house burned down and then they started to do drugs just the same as me.

I was around it.

And you're bored when you're homeless, so you tend to use drugs, especially where I'm from So day-to-day basis, so we are for Manhattan.

We are the designated drop-in for Manhattan, which means that we are open Monday through Saturday for young people to access array of services.

And so we open at 10 a.m.

and that starts with, we provide breakfast for young people, so we provide three meals a day.

We have breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We have access to showers and laundry services We have access to support spaces, to talk about their experiences, both within the shelter or just life experiences, and then they get assigned to a case manager.

And then one of the cool things that we have is something called a door store, which is a clothing closet for young people where at monthly they can pick up clothing items The most common needs we have from young people one is to like have a community and a safe space.

So really young people are coming in to either because they have to leave their shelters or get off the street.

And so again, as they drop in, young people are coming in for a space to be in throughout the day.

And they're able to be here again all day from 10 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

So the things that young people kind of show up with is a history of homelessness.

Most of our young people, this is not their first experience with homelessness, unfortunately, more unstable housing.

They are coming in for mental health support, so we have a lot of young people that have diagnosed mental health needs, and so they come in for accessible mental healthcare.

We have young people that are coming in for substance use support, and that might not be something that they explicitly name as something that they want support with, but they do identify that as a need when it comes up.

And young people that, again, that are looking for a hot meal warm space, a shower, and clean clothing.

And so really young people are coming to get their most basic needs met as I'm on my way to New York, I realized, I have no idea where I'm going to be living.

I wasn't comfortable asking the few friends that I had in New York to stay long term, school.

hadn't officially started yet, so I wasn't able to rely on School housing So in that moment, I was like, you should probably look up resources for teens because I was freshly 17, 18 at the time.

And on the way, I I found Covenant House as like the top Google search.

So I plugged in my headphones and I got off the Greyhound, and I somehow walked down the street and found it.

And at first, the security guard said we didn't have a bed for you.

So I was gutted.

I didn't know where else to go.

I was like, Well, this was my only option, and that was it.

He handed me a list of resources said, best of luck, and hopefully come back in a couple days and we might have a bed for you.

And as I turned and it was so funny, and I laughed about this because I will always say, I literally turned around, I started to push play on defying gravity, and I know it's the craziest Didn't even get to push play yet.

And he says, hold on, wait, we just got a bed.

Like, as I'm turning around and I said, you're joking.

He said, nope, come on back in.

That moment, they had a bed for me and like my life changed from that moment on, which is wild.

So how did it change?

Truly, it's because I had felt so alone, I like, I knew that like, I was coming into an area and a community that I was not a part of.

Being raised in a community that was predominantly Caucasian, I was already.

I was already put apart or put apart's not the word I want.

just I was not part of the community that was at Covenant House at the time that I was there.

So when I got there, it was a culture shock.

I had never been around so many people of color because my adoptive parents had made it know, like, you just don't associate with those type of people because they're just not who we hang out with, and that was a lesson that I had to break very, very quickly.

Um And Covent House A, was just like, breathe.

It's going to be really scary.

Do not let this experience break you, because it will.

And they helped me through those first couple of weeks, and that's truly what I needed to just get back up on my feet again So here, Just off of Union Square is the social Services offices of New York City.

And during the time when I was living out of my storage locker and sleeping on couches with friends, every single dollar mattered to me saving up enough to be able to afford a place to live.

And so I thought, okay, what if I didn't have to buy as much food every week?

That would help me, right?

$50 a month would go a long way, I could get into an apartment even faster.

So I came to here to apply for, what, then we just called food stamps for food support services.

And at the time that I came, I remember it was starting it must have been a warm day or it was starting to warm, I was wearing my leather jacket and I was about to go get on a greyhound bus to visit my girlfriend in D.C., which then provided me, like, three nights of sleeping somewhere else.

And so I had with me, like, my leather jacket and a, you know, bag of clothes and, like, a laptop bag or whatever.

I remember just being heavy with bags and books, which was often My life as I lived out of my storage locker and maybe wasn't going to return to it right and was coming back and forth.

And so I went up into this lobby and up into the offices, and in the room was a bunch of folks who needed help and I waited for a long time with the paper application that they told me to fill out when I walked in.

And I walked into the window, and I turned it in to her, and she looked it over and said,, "You need to fill in an address."

And I said, But I don't have an address, I'm homeless."

She's like, "I can't take this application without an address."

And I'm like, "I don't have an address address.

What do you want me to put here?"

Like, "I am hungry, I need food, I don't have enough money."

She said, Come back with an address."

I said, "What do you want me me to put here?"

She said, I don't know, put a friend's address or something.

And I was like, "I'm not gonna put my friend's address on here.

One, we aren't a household."

Then you'd ask me to count up our household income, and and two, then what?

You're gonna, like be surveilling them for how much the city spent at that address on food stamps when I in fact, wasn't living at that address?

And three, you were basically asking me to commit fraud because I didn't live there, right?

So I was really angry, I'm like, I don't have an address.

What do you want me to do?"

And she just took her little blinds at the, you know, plexiglass window and shut it, and then yelled next and refused to help me.

So I walked out of there, just completely angry and forlorn, that I had spent, like, hours waiting in line, trying to get help, only be told that because I was homeless, I couldn't get food stamps.

I'm not saying that there's been a real uptick.

I think that we're just we haven't solved problems.

And I think that what we're doing is just going off of really hard times.

Right now, prices are through the roof.

Yeah.

Life is really, really not as easy as it was.

People are looking, and people are desperate, and you can see it even just around the parks sitting here right now, and my heart goes out.

So, you know, what we do for ourselves within our communities to help people in our communities, we do that.

But knowing this on a large scale, we need to do this throughout the country and throughout the world.

This is not just New York.

It's throughout the country.

But we need to start somewhere especially when you're talking about the younger population being homeless.

We have a teenage kids.

are some daughters.

How can you not be there for your kids.

Whatever their sexuality,, whatever they're politics, they're.

your kids.

How many people do you think on your average night in New York City are unhouse our homes?

Whether that's sleeping on the street, sleeping in shelter, a quarter Of of a million people.

I just do.

I mean, I know how, what are we?

78 million here on the island?

A quarter of a million, definitely.

Do you know?

Do you have the stats?

You?

I'.

You do have the stats?

I'm, like, a little scared.

No, no.. It's 3,500, so.. Oh, my God.

250,000.

350,000,500, imagine.

If only, yeah.

We lost to a couple of zeros, so I was right on.

So if we did say the price was right, I would have been.

But that's that's number that we should not be looking at.

We should be looking at a number that you did say.

And that could be used.

You said 3,500?

No, but that should be the number.

No, it isn't.

That should be the number.

At 350,000?

Think about that.

60% of those are families.

I'm having an emotional moment.

Despite Mayor Adams' historical support for gender firming care in New York City, recent events, comments from his staff and his teams, capitulation to the federal administration and other actions have led to the questioning of whether or not that support is firm and whether or not protections for young gender diverse youth, their access to healthcare and mental healthcare, will that be protected We know what works.

resources like that.

If we're someone is going to the door and they're getting they're getting information, they're getting resources, they're getting job training, then they're getting placed in a job.

Those interventions work, and the city of New York, you can tell the Mayor for every dollar you put in here this is just the outcomes that we can get and keep people from being unhoused.

I keep them in their homes or find them homes after they get higher quality jobs and opportunities.

What the city would rather do is invest in policing, for example, to round up homeless people on the streets than they would to the resources at the doors that can keep those people that are in the streets And it's just backwards thinking.

The city of New York is not investing in resources, we know that work Another example is that we've been working with career youth in the the city council for a long time in trying to end the epidemic, the fair futures, work that we've done, the respite sites that we've been building.

And we've seen in every single one of those investments that it absolutely works in and keeps people in safe conditions, as they transition out of foster care, as they look for new homes.

We see that it works.

Everything is going down, we see HIV, and AIDS numbers going down, or contractions going down.

We see young people being able to stay in the foster care system longer, gives them an opportunity to transition into workforce, or into the workforce in a more meaningful way, especially the most vulnerable populations in the homeless shelter system, which are queer youth, or respite centers that are actual sites that people would rather than be in the streets would actually rather be there.

We see all these things working, and we did this maybe 10 years ago in the city council from you know 2013 and on.

We see this work happening, it's working.

The initiatives are working, the resources are getting there.

Then we get to an administration like the Adams administration, and it's like pulling teeth to show them that these things are working and we need to reinvest or invest more into them.

that, you're going to see the homeless population the queer youth population, the young homeless population, we'll see that reduced consistently.

Should we continue to do the things that work Instead, they don't.

They want to do big poshy loud, statement policies like removing encampments, instead of addressing the core issue of the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis.

And that's that performative work that this administration does is leading us to more homelessness in the city of New York.

So we really need, again, we need thoughtful people that are going to push policies that we already know that work with a huge emphasis on empathy, and not these these brutal show forces that are only performative and don't really address the crisis that we see at hand.

And it kind of makes me really sad because I can tell my older sister still harbors a lot of that pain and resentment, because she exhibits that toxicity, that our mom exhibited towards her often.

And it just makes me really sad, especially since she also went through Covenant House and gained a lot of insight and value from the program.

But still has that pain that she carries with her.

So yeah, a lot of that I had to work through years of therapy.

I first got diagnosed with depression when I was 15 in high school.

And from then on, it was going through talk therapy group therapy.

A lot of times I had to be hospitalized, I think I had to be hospitalized 10 to 13 times due to suicidal ideation and attempts.

And it was really.. It was really hard, especially once I transitioned from youth inpatient to adult inpatient, to go into my childhood traumas with my therapists, especially knowing that I had to go back at home at the end of the day And so it wasn't until I had finally got a job during during COVID when all of the because essential workers were needed, and I was starting to save up my own money, preferably for an apartment, that I finally had had enough and I told my mom, like, hey, you can't keep taking my money, you can't keep taking advantage of me.

I have to save up my money to get an apartment and get out.

I can't stay here anymore.

And because I had shown that initiative and that desire, she said, you can either stay here under my rules or you can leave.

And I decided to leave.

Obviously, not easily, not without rage in my stuff being withheld, but thankfully after some time away with the support of my sister in Covenant House, I was able to get a bed at Covenant House and finally get out of that environment It makes you a stronger person to keep going.

Don't give up.

Manifest it.

Love yourself.

It has a lot to do with loving yourself and the most main important.

If you don't want it, you ain't going to get it If you don't work it, you ain't gonna have it.

One thing that made me come far is I wanted to be better.

I want to continue healing.

My past is not who I am One thing growing up, and it's weird, because I never need it now.

I never needed acceptance.

I don't need acceptance.

I don't care who loves me, who's there for me, because I have myself, but there's been a certain few people in my life that no matter what I say, how I say it, what I do, how I cry, they love me for me.

So I guess genuinely loved.

genuinely and unconditionally loved is a big, big thing for a person.

Like myself or anybody experienced in PTSD and childhood trauma, unconditional love no lying, no sugarcoating it, just be there for them.

Because if I had that growing up to be listened to, I don't think I would be crying as hard as I am now So what helped me to transition out of homelessness was being connected to, like first getting my essential resources that I needed, like getting my name changed documents, all of that.

At the time getting like like food stamp, you know, like whatever basic necessities I was able to get covered, getting that covered first.

But for me, honestly, the biggest thing was like having access to employment opportunities, especially for me, like as a nonconventional person, like, I was clear that I didn't want to be working at an office or, unfortunately, a lot of times a lot of the opportunities they offer young people with like work at this, you know, retail stuff.

And like, I've done that before.

Don't get me wrong.

I did that But I just felt passionate about wanting to advocate for my community and like wanting to do work around, advocacy around, youth homelessness So being able to be plugged into multiple opportunities to do that was what really, I think, helped me because I was able to save money from those opportunities that essentially helped me when the time came to like find my own apartment and move out.

You know, I do wish I was one of those people that got like a voucher and like got to live and like, I don't know, like a really nice place or whatever, but like, you know, I have to be grateful that my, my journey was my journey and at least I was able to find housing on my own and like, that's how I did it.

But that's why I'm also such a big, big advocate on like, let's think about employment opportunities, especially employment opportunities that people want as a prevention method for homelessness.

Yeah, I think people that made a difference were like case managers um who really care, right, who saw you for who you are and wanted to meet you halfway.

It wasn't like they were being paternalistic or adultists.

Like, I know what's right and I know what, and this is what you should do.

And like I went to college and you should go to college It was people who were like, hey, I see you have a passion for speaking.

I see you have a passion for supporting people.

And I have this opportunity to work at this place.

Let's put you there and connect the dots.

So those folks and then also what was helpful is like um learning about the resources after you keep your housing.

So, for example, um an lot of young people aren't taught about like it's like, how does like HRA help you, right?

Like, how does, um, like a one- shot deal in New York City, like, a one shot deal is, if you're ever behind on rent, um, you can apply for a one shot deal that the city will help you pay off like that debt you have for that one time.

And like the hope is that hopefully after this one time support, you won't get back.

Right.

So like learning about all of these different ways to keep your housing after the fact was super helpful.

And like people who taught me about that.

And I mean, yeah, for me, like getting, I was very fortunate that I got very familiar with the key players in the city.

So like, I was one of the co- founders of the New York City Youth Action Board The body of youth that represents in New York City represents homeless youth.

And so we got to do a lot of advocacy work.

Um, we got to like change a lot of stuff for young people for young people experiencing homelessness in New York City.

So because of that, I was then able to know a lot of people in like the Department of Social Services.

And like, obviously knowing these people, when I had questions about anything, kind of like gave me a leverage.

So which, again, I credit back to being able to be put in the right places at the right time in terms of like the advocacy world and the advocacy work I was in and out of Co to House for about a couple of years before we became completely housing stable.

But I during that time, I really got to lean on Covenant House and its resources, truly just in terms of just like finding out who I was, because I was scared, I was alone.

I was still trying to figure out if I was queer identifying.

So I got to lean on a lot of staff to kind of help me explain those feelings, those thoughts.

And then they pointed me towards more resources to also got to go back to school full time time, audition full time, And then I saw Kinky Boots the Musical in 2017, two years later.

Just I had paid all my bills on time, I was working full time, and I said, I'm going to treat myself.

Just everything's going out the way I need it.

I'm this I'm succeeding in this program.

I've earned it.

I saw the show and it immediately changed my life.

I knew that I wanted to do something.

I wanted to be a part of something bigger, that was a story that was very similar to mine.

And after leaving the show and coming back and relaying that like sense of hope to staff they immediately were like, well, what do you need from us?

They got me in touch with individuals that were part of the show to help me train.

Staff would stay up late to help me run lines, just so I was fully prepared to eventually do the show And as I eventually left the program, and actually on my way out, I bumped into one of the producers from the show who knew who I was, I had gone into the show, at least after that.

18 more times.

I saw it every single time they put in a different level Lola, just so I knew what I was working with.

And they were like,You need to just go and audition for this show.

And I said, okay.

And I auditioned and auditioned and auditioned.

12 auditions later, four callbacks.

I eventually made it, not for the regional or the tour, but I made it doing an international production as the first American to fly across the States And that was that was when everything kind of exploded.

I got my first apartment after the announcement went out.

I was working full time, and I was really confident in who I was and where I was headed Right now, I'm writing a memoir of these years, and it's a time for me to look deeply and try to make sense of what happened, why did it happen What did it feel like, and how did I get through it?

As homelessness rises and attacks on young trans people are center stage in a produced culture war, trying to use people like me, like people that I was as a way to get people like the place where I grew up to vote for an attempted dictator.

I think it's really important that we tell our stories about times when to be trans was almost unspeakable, where I grew up, and to be homeless continues to be a taboo subject that when I bring it up makes people uncomfortable and squirm away, even as more and more people, a majority of people polled recently know somebody who's experienced homelessness.

So I'm writing this memoir, telling these stories, in the hopes that it can help other young people or other people who went through what I did to feel us alone.

more youth shelters.

Because those are forever full.

Those are always full, especially New York City, there is not enough youth shelters.

And also, if you guys know what a Jack Ryan is, it's a type of mental health shelter.

do not put anybody do not put any type of youth into a Jack Ryan shelter with other adults.

It is the worst experience I wanted to kill myself.

What is it?

It's it's where people go whenever they have mental.. So I said I had bipolar.

I was diagnosed with that.

But to a certain extent, you can get me diagnosed a lot, especially when you're doing drugs in the drugs that I was So I just told him that I .

happened to tell him that I had anxieties.

They put me in a Jack Ryan shelter.

This is where people have schizophrenia.

This is where people that are drooling spit on themselves, smoking K2.

It's it's it's.

Yeah, it's just staff running a mental health institution.

Basically.

It's the people of orange, the BRC, the Jack Ryan on 25th, I stayed there at one time.

So basically just don't.

try not to put youth, even if they have mental health problems, try to make that a law against putting them in mental health shelters that include adults, because that's that's very harmful.

At least it was for me.

Oh.

sucks thinking about that place.

Yeah, um And just more youth shelters.

That's what I would say, just more use shelters, 'cause there's not enough.

There's like three in Manhattan.

And those only have like 20, 30 beds.

Do you know how many homeless youth you see on the streets?

No I mean?

And you don't see a lot of homeless you don't see a lot of homeless hide out, they'll have their own particular spot, and they won't.

But there's a lot of homeless youth on the streets.

We need a lot more shelters for ourselves.

Because I know California has a lot more shelters than New York City.

there's a people in New York City that think their success is owed solely to their their hard work, to their commitment to this, like the circumstances in life that they were dealt with are the same as everyone else.

So when they see that we give someone housing to help stabilize them, to keep them off the streets, to keep them from their substance abuse, and to keep them from the carceral system, they're like, we don't have free housing.

Why do they get it?

And don't understand that that little bit of support can eradicate the amount of money that we're using in tax dollars for our entire homelessness systems, can be eradicated.

We can move money from there to support you and make sure your parks are nice.

Make sure that your schooling is topnotch, because we're no longer resourcing a homelessness crisis because it doesn't exist because we started a housing first model that we know already works But again, because those voices and those people are the ones in the ear of the leadership of our city, they're the ones that are stopping progress from being made on a model that we know that works.

So we've implemented through our comprehensive plan on almost every single facet of what we're talking about.

Queer youth, homelessness, youth, young people that are homeless, but homeless populations in general, and people in substance abuse are people that are no longer in the carceral system, all of those folks, we've made a point that a housing first model will solve, will begin the process of generally solving for all these problems, and resource wise would actually save the city money long term, as opposed to what we're doing now, which is housing hundreds of thousands of people in our homeless system at a very in an expensive way.

As somebody who has a drug addicted sister, they're definitely not homeless by choice.

They're definitely not unhoused by choice.

There has been some pre-existing Trauma that has impacted their ability to function successfully, and their need to cope with whatever is currently going on in their life has forced them to turn to X, Y, Z substances, and it's definitely not a choice.

A lot of youth, and those of a big majority of the ones that I have spoken to are primarily primarily LGBTQIA identified, are not choosing to be homeless.

A lot of them and a lot of us have realized that programs do not have the type of services that we need, or it's not safe.

As in, yes, there might be a roof over their head, yes, there might be four walls surrounding them, but behind closed doors staff cannot be everywhere to protect everyone at any time.

And sometimes it's safer to be by yourself, with your things surrounding you, on the street than it is to be inside these programs, because again, there are not eyes everywhere, and you can't protect everyone at all times.

So there is a level of trust \ that comes from entering programs and entering organizations on both ends.

You don't choose this life.

Trust and believe.

I did not choose to want to have to pack up little things I had and relocate to a brand new city.

Thank God I did.

If I could choose to do it over again, I wouldn't.

I would have fought a little bit harder and chosen to stay, but look at my life now.

Biggest thing that gives me hope right now is my new family.

I have a wonderful wife that I love so much.

She's literally my rock and she's there.

Thick and thin.

Literally, we've been speaking since Covenant House and beyond.

She supports every endeavor that I have with Covenant House and then some.

My wonderful pet dog, Ash, she gives me hope.

And more than anything, those who support me, you know, it doesn't always have to be the ones that you're tied to.

But it can be my wonderful niece, you know, that I'm able to see every day.

My older sister, my younger sister, the people who accept me for who I am and believe in me, they give me hope, and they're my biggest cheerleaders In the next five years, I would like to see access increasing, service provision, increasing.

Not only do we need young people to be able to freely access things that will help them reach their goals, better themselves and their health and their wellbeing, their safety, their circumstances, become contributing members of their communities and our broader society, but we also need there to be services that they can access.

We need more funding for youth mental health whether that's via the education system, the health and mental health system, and a variety of other mechanisms So many of our young people that I work with every day, have some of the most beautiful and extraordinary gifts that I've ever had the getting to know, witnessing up close.

And unfortunately, under the current circumstances, many of these young people will never be able to share those gifts with you and with our broader society as, how could they?

When they worry about where they'll lay their heads, and whether or not they'll be safe when they close their eyes.

Our young people deserve to feel that they can do so, to nurture those beautiful gifts and become the best, most incredible versions of themselves, become functioning members of our communities, societies, and ultimtimately enhance everything that we all are able to experience, instead of being pushed to the margins of our society and excluded from the potential of driving us all forward