Too often we pass by queer homeless youth without a second glance. As if just another part of the scenery, they blend into the background, invisible. Sadly, they continue to be overlooked and lumped together into one category, the homeless. Yet homelessness is a complex issue that is affecting different segments of the population for a multitude of reasons. It’s in understanding these differences that we can begin to appreciate the reasons why people end up on the streets and even find ways to help.

One segment of the population that is at high risk for homelessness is youth, specifically GLBT youth. As these youth struggle with their sexual identities and face families less than supportive, there are seldom-safe places for them to turn. From couch crashing to sleeping on the streets, dumpster diving to drug abuse, this is the their story.

Sitting across from Mars, a striking 17-year-old high school student and aspiring musician, it’s close to impossible to guess that she’s exactly that – 17. Sure, she has the usual teenage accessories – a body piercing here, a tattoo there – but her demeanor is that of someone well into her 20s. With warm eyes and a cool confidence about her, she is the perfect example of someone referred to as “an old soul.”

Perhaps more difficult to believe than her age, however, is the fact that less than one year ago, Mars was homeless, addicted to drugs and living on the streets of San Diego. If you ask her now what enables her to stay clean, sober and living successfully in a group home downtown, she does not flinch.

“I think it’s surrounding myself with good people. I think it’s the 180-degree turn I’ve made from doing drugs. My body feels great. My mind feels great. All these great things are happening and I never thought they could happen,” she explains, then pauses.

“And yoga helps, too!”

Mars is just one of numerous GLBT youth in our community who are, or have at one time been, homeless. In 2003, a needs assessment of this high-risk population of youth was conducted by The Center, along with The Chadwick Center at Children’s Hospital, Metropolitan Community Church, YMCA Youth and Family Services and Walden Family Services in order to assess the need for a “Rainbow Lodge” – a transitional living facility in San Diego specifically for GLBT youth. The results of the assessment were shocking.

According to the LGBT & Youth Housing Project 2004, “In a period of less than six months, researchers were able to make direct contact with over 400 LGBT youth who were either currently or recently homeless. Those youth reported living on the streets and in parks, pan-handling, stealing, small-time drug dealing, and providing sex for money in order to obtain food, shelter or clothing. Further, while most of the youth had knowledge of the currently available youth shelter resources, these youth respondents repeatedly shared stories of invisibility, discomfort, harassment, and humiliation when seeking shelter services from traditional providers.”

Mars can identify with many of these statistics. She was only 14 when Child Protective Services removed her from her abusive mother’s household and placed her in foster care. She turned 15 in a foster home and later moved in with her father, who hadn’t had custody of her since she was 3 years old. The housing match was not a good one.

“It was then that the drugs got really, really bad,” Mars explains. “I was shooting up dope, and I wasn’t home, and I would steal money. My dad eventually kicked me out. He was scared. He just didn’t know what to do anymore.”

Mars ended up on the streets, occasionally crashing on friends’ couches, if the offer was made. She hung around a lot of drug dealers, a decision she describes now as being “All for the drugs.” Then in December of 2003, she hit rock bottom.

“I was really depressed, and I tried to kill myself,” Mars explains, recollecting that extremely dark period. “I tried to kill myself and when it didn’t work, I surrendered and called my dad and said, ‘Put me in one of those homes.’”

Her father did just that, and although she was kicked out of the first shelter she entered over a school-related incident, Mars was able to flourish in another group home – the one she still resides in today. As a self-identified bisexual, Mars encountered many of the standard issues that GLBT youth face when entering the system, including anxiety and fear about being “outed.”

“Going for my interview at the group home, I was scared of releasing information about my sobriety or sexuality,” she explains. “I was afraid that if I told them who I was and what I did, they wouldn’t consider me.”

Even once she was accepted into the group home, Mars was hesitant to let her guard down. “I had serious anxiety problems,” she recalls. “I hid in my room for over a week. I wouldn’t eat or talk to anyone. It wasn’t until all the drugs were out of my system and I started going to school that I started talking to people. To this day, I’m still just beginning to talk to people.”

But today, you would never guess that Mars ever struggled so severely. She has been sober for over nine months, attends school regularly and shares her music and poetry at open mics around town. When asked what she thinks the biggest misconception is about the many GLBT homeless youth that can be spotted daily on the streets of Hillcrest, her answer is brief but insightful:

“I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that we’re all alike, all slackers, and that we don’t want to do anything with our lives. That we’re just rebellious, angry teenagers and we don’t give a fuck. But maybe we were given reason to [be that way]. Maybe we were raised differently than others. Or maybe we’re just in pain.”

“Homelessness, especially among youth, is a national problem. It’s also a huge problem here in San Diego County,” Patrick Loose, director of operations at The Center, told the Gay & Lesbian Times in recent email correspondence.

Loose is one of the individuals involved in the Rainbow Lodge project, and estimates that the number of youth on the streets who are GLBT ranges between 35 and 45 percent. Awareness of this issue has been slow in coming, but several important national mainstream organizations have begun to address it – perhaps because the homeless youth population is engaged in extremely high-risk survival activities.

According to The Center’s 2003 needs assessment, conducted as part of the Rainbow Lodge proposal, “Homeless youth in San Diego County are the youth at risk for the greatest negative outcomes. Among this general population of homeless youth, GLBT and/or HIV-positive youth compromise a special sub-population that are at even greater risk. The scientific data on LGBTQ youth continue to find that these youth are at higher risk for: suicide; drug and alcohol abuse; hate crimes; smoking; early high-school drop out; homelessness; sexual assault; HIV infection; depression; and a variety of other negative health consequences. The youth at highest risk are those LGBTQ youth who have already begun to experience homelessness.”

Dana Toppel, coordinator of the Hillcrest Youth Center, explains that homeless queer youth often fall prey to what is known as the “snowball effect,” exacerbating the severity of their lives on the streets. She explains that kids are often kicked out of their homes due to their sexual orientation, and then resort to drugs as one way of coping with the situation. Add a predisposition for mental illness to an already volatile combination and you are left with extreme cases of homelessness that require extreme forms of treatment and rehabilitation.

“With the needs of youth being so multiple,” Toppel explains, “if you get them off the street, then you have to treat everything – the substance abuse, the fact that they are not in school and so on.”

Providing the care that’s needed is becoming increasingly more difficult in San Diego, where funding for youth services is currently depleting. Although the Hillcrest Youth Center (HYC), a drop-in center serving all of San Diego County for GLBT and questioning youth between the ages of 14 and 24, is thriving, the amount and type of care they are able to give is somewhat limited by their restricted hours of operation. At the HYC, youth have access to discussion groups, computers, tutoring, vital hygiene products, sleeping bags and more. But one issue still remains – where do these youth go when the HYC closes its doors at night or on certain days of the week?

Glitter, an 18-year-old homeless queer youth with a head full of curly hair, will show you the track marks on his arms, but he will not tell you exactly where he lives. That is because, like many homeless youth, his home is a tent, hidden away in one of Hillcrest’s many canyons. Before that, his home was a wooded area behind a school, and before that, an acquaintance’s garage. He is extremely proud of his current abode, which he claims looks more like a studio than a tent, thanks to his flair for decorating.

Two subjects light up Glitter’s face like nothing else. The first is his boyfriend, who is currently serving time in prison. The second is crystal meth, a drug he has been “slamming” intravenously into his arms for approximately a year and a half. Already a seasoned drug user from an early age, Glitter was introduced to IV drug use by an ex-boyfriend. He readily admits now that he is an addict.

“I’m not proud of [my track marks] but in a way I am,” Glitter told the Gay & Lesbian Times during a recent visit to the Hillcrest Youth Center. “It shows that I have overcome and learned how to control my tolerance for pain and myself – being aware of my body, and knowing how much pain I can take.”

Glitter has a story that resembles those of many queer youth. He was placed in the foster care system early on, has a long history of mental illness diagnoses and has been struggling with chemical dependency since he began smoking marijuana at age 12. These days he divides his time between his canyon, the HYC, local bathhouses, Balboa Park and other hot spots around town. He cannot tell you what an average day is like for him, because the meth prevents him from sleeping for days at a time. He can tell you, however, the exact route he takes when “dumpster-diving” around Hillcrest, in search of food. He can also tell you that he does not want to be on drugs forever and has hope that he will break the cycle he is in.

“I hope I will climb out of it,” he says, with sincere feeling. “I don’t want to slam all my life. I know I’m a junkie, but I’m not a hardcore needle junkie.”

When asked what he hopes people might grow to learn about homeless queer youth, he explains, “There’s a lot of us out there, and regardless of whether society wants to notice us or accept us, we’re there. I wish that people would try to help out a little bit more with us, because we’re not as bad as people think. We’re not trying to hurt anybody; we just want to be happy.”

For many GLBT homeless youth, seeking out help from service providers can seem even more dangerous than remaining on the streets. According to The Center’s 2003 needs assessment, GLBT youth consistently reported that they do not feel safe accessing many of the services available to them. Youth reported the need to hide their sexual orientation, gender status or HIV status in an effort to protect themselves from discrimination from service providers or violence at the hands of other youth. In addition, a number of youth reported that service providers encouraged them not to disclose their sexual identity, gender status or HIV status to other service recipients, out of fear that physical violence might result.

Kiara, an 18-year-old lesbian who was placed in her first group home at 13, knows all too well the effects that “the system” can have on GLBT youth. She recalls that almost immediately after she came out at age 15, staff members at her group home began treating her differently because she was gay.

“Once you’re open, you’re labeled,” explains Kiara. “If I was to sit on the couch next to a girl, the staff would tell me to separate. They’d always say ‘boundaries’ and make me move. Any time I had a close female friend, and we’d show affection, they’d assume that we were more than that, so I couldn’t have close female friends in the system.”

Nevertheless, Kiara met her first girlfriend while living in a group home in San Diego, but found it difficult to sustain the relationship once the staff discovered the nature of the relationship. Kiara explains that a “10 foot rule” was immediately enforced, meaning she and her girlfriend had to stay at least 10 feet from one another at all times. This meant no talking, no time alone, and of course, no physical contact of any kind. Kiara describes the staff’s treatment as being extremely hypocritical.

“They set the 10 foot rule up because we were dating, but when girls had boyfriends during the coeds, the girls and boys would be affectionate and the staff wouldn’t do anything,” says Kiara.

“But with me and my girlfriend it was different. Other girls would talk to the staff about boyfriends and that was fine, but we weren’t even allowed to speak to one another. The 10 foot eventually tore us apart, because if you broke it, you got 24 hour room time as a punishment.”

Looking back, Kiara recalls that she was also treated poorly by other kids in her group home because she was different. Aside from the standard teasing, she explains that rumors were always being spread that she was involved with other girls in the home.

“If there was any other lesbian or bisexual with me in there, it was automatically assumed we were fucking around,” she explains. “Kids were very judgmental and afraid of what’s different.”

Unfair treatment of GLBT youth in the group home system is just one of a myriad of reasons behind the planning of San Diego’s potential Rainbow Lodge project. The project seeks to design, locate, fund and develop a 6-to-12 bed, 4-to-8 unit transitional living facility for youth between the ages of 18 and 24 who identify as GLBT, questioning, or HIV positive, and who are either at extreme risk for homelessness or are already without a home. Ideally, onsite supportive services would include: drug and alcohol treatment, professional mental health and counseling services, youth case management, health and HIV/STD education, basic medical care, job training and employment services, educational resources and tutoring, basic financial planning and fundamental life skills training. The planning committee hopes to locate a facility in Hillcrest, City Heights, North Park, South Park, University Heights or Normal Heights.

“The Center is currently seeking a property for an affordable housing project for youth,” Loose explains. “This is a very complicated process, partly because of the financing and partly because of the overheated real estate market in San Diego.”

Currently, there are three types of housing solutions that GLBT youth need: emergency shelter, transitional living programs and permanent affordable housing.

“Right now, there is a dearth of available shelter and housing for homeless youth,” Loose says. “This problem is exacerbated for homeless LGBT youth, who have very few options when it comes to competent service providers. Many would rather be on the streets than in many of the shelters offered to youth in San Diego County.”

Had the Rainbow Lodge already been in existence this past year, its services may very well have been utilized by Megan, a 19-year-old homeless youth who has spent many nights sleeping in the alleys of Hillcrest. Megan became homeless when she moved to San Diego at 19, with no resources except an acquaintance she met online.

“When I first got to San Diego, I was living in this guy’s car and we were doing drugs and squatting and really doing nothing,” says Megan. “Because of the drugs, he flipped out and probably could have killed us, so I found a sleeping bag through the Hillcrest Youth Center and began sleeping in an alley here in Hillcrest. Then I found a laundry room in an apartment complex and started staying there, but I was stupid and invited my friends to hang out and party there. When I wasn’t there one night, they were too loud, and the cops were called. There went my place to live, so I went back to sleeping in another alley,” she explains.

It was a friend and fellow member of the queer youth community who eventually reached out to Megan and assisted in getting her off the streets. Although Megan was afraid that her street friends might harm her for leaving the group, she accepted her friend’s help and was able to successfully kick her addiction to drugs. Recovery did not come without its obstacles, however. Long waiting lists at local service providers prevented Megan from being accepted into a chemical dependency treatment program and she was forced to detox from drugs in a friend’s apartment, an experience that she describes as horrifying. Like many other homeless youths, she also encountered a great deal of difficulty in trying to secure a job without a permanent address or contact phone number.

“Everywhere I tried to turn for help, it seemed like no one wanted to help. No one cared,” she explains. “It was super hard to find a job, and bed hopping between couches at the same time. I didn’t have an address or a phone number. I was losing hope. Until I went out one night and met Reese.”

Reese is Megan’s girlfriend of nine months. She has never been homeless herself, but is a sympathetic and loving partner. Meeting Reese changed everything for Megan and gave her the motivation needed to continue battling for a life off of the streets.

Since she accepted her friend’s initial helping hand, Megan has never looked back.

“There is not a day that goes by when I don’t think about doing drugs, and how those people are that I used to hang out with,” says Megan. “But that is not a place I want to be. I want to do so much, and you’re so limited to what you can do when you’re on drugs.”

Megan is currently looking to move out of San Diego, with Reese, to start a new life. She is hopeful that plans for the Rainbow Lodge will come to fruition and that the new facility will help other youth who struggle with homelessness.

“This new center sounds amazing because so many kids out there need something like that,” comments Megan. “I’m glad someone is finally doing something about this, because every week, at least, I see a new face of youth out on the streets in the same situation that I was in.”

Despite the hardships associated with life on the streets, all of the youth interviewed for this piece reported one similar wish – to be viewed with more compassion by members of the GLBT community and to be viewed as survivors instead of victims.

“I wish that people would take a better look around,” says Megan. “Everyone who has never been homeless sees homeless kids and says, they must have done something to be out there, or they must be using drugs. I see people walk by homeless kids all the time in Hillcrest and they don’t give them a second look. It’s like they’re not even there. But society and people like that are the reason people are out there. It breaks my heart that humans don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.”

Mars agrees and adds, “The only thing I can say from my experience from walking about Hillcrest is that I think [homeless youth] are misunderstood and judged harshly, and they work almost twice as hard as anyone else just to hang on. Some of these people have been out there for years, and they do it every day and somehow they survive. I think there should be more help and more people recognizing strength and change and willingness. I mean, you don’t have to give them money: but buy them a meal, give them a phone number [instead].”

Kiara, who recently aged out of the system, remains optimistic. Although her recent attempt at assisted living failed, she hopes to one day live alone and stand on her own two feet.

“Things are looking up for me,” she says with a smile. “If it wasn’t for the system, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor.”