LIFE STORIES

Poverty, homelessness threats for LGBQT youth

Little support for those forced out of homes, ignored at school

by SARAH ORLINA

"For LGBTQ youth, the issue of family acceptance, and school safety and inclusion, are two key factors that lead to them being homeless, on the street or working at lower-income jobs and having difficulty with a survivable income as adults." — Dr. Trish Garner

When her father found out that was a lesbian, Alex Brennan was given $1.50 and left in the middle of Langley to fend for herself.

There remains a stigma and discrimination against queer and trans youth. Surprisingly, families and schools are not the safest place for these young individuals. One in four trans or queer youth in B.C. is forced out of their homes because of transphobia and homophobia, but there are no services for these youth.

“My dad and I were pretty close,” Brennan said, who was 15 when she finally came out to her father.

“When I told him I was a lesbian he screamed, ‘Is that the reason you’ve done everything wrong?’”

Brennan was raised in a conservative home. Despite the traditional upbringing, she had still experienced multiple homophobic remarks from her older sister.

It was her sister who spread word of Brennan’s orientation throughout their high school, leaving her vulnerable and unsure of how to deal with the situation. The administration and the principal did not address the problem.

“The teachers in school didn’t really care,” she said with a sigh. “You have to deal with it on your own. I had to drop out of the public school because it got really bad there. It was hard to juggle full-time school while trying to find a place [to live].”

Finding housing, learning 'normal' skills

Because of homophobia or transphobia in families and in schools, queer and trans youth are forced into conditions where they lack the same services that would normally be provided to heterosexual homeless youth. For example, queer and trans youth are twice as likely to experience trouble in finding housing.

When her parents divorced, Brennan had to move back and forth between two homes. After having tried to leave her mother’s house multiple times, only to be brought back to the unsafe conditions at home by the police, Brennan sought security outside of the home. “The hardest thing was finding a safe place to stay,” she said.

“I was couch surfing with my partner at the time. We stayed in a lot of party houses. The cops weren’t really on our side — they don’t really care much for queer youth and there are very few that are okay with [us].”

Not only are the authorities unsure about and uncomfortable with queer and trans youth, youth workers are also not educated about how to deal with the specific issues of homelessness within the queer and trans population.

Brennan said that it was hard for her to convince authorities and the youth workers she was set up with that she could be trusted. It was not because of her personal disposition, she said, but rather the fact that she was queer and young that stopped her from gaining their trust.

“It’s harder for LGBTQ youth to use resources, because you have to make sure the youth workers are okay with it,” she said. “I’ve had youth workers that didn’t really talk about it because they were uncomfortable and didn’t have a lot of knowledge on the subject."

“I didn’t know how to do a lot of the normal household stuff,” Brennan said. One of the other youth workers she had first met suggested the new concept of “semi-independent” housing, which had only been established two years earlier.

Because she was 18 and an adult, Brennan was expected to leave the youth shelter that had previously been home. There were a lot of other youth that were not given the same opportunity of using semi-independent housing, so even with the short amount of time she had spent in the shelter, she was thankful.

“When you’re on the street, you’re used to eating fast food or going to soup kitchens,” she said. “I didn’t know how to cook. I was really [disoriented] when I got to the house. I was one out of six other people that got in.”

Working for change at the provincial level

Dr. Trish Garner, the community organizer of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition, has worked with Brennan to share her story on the difficulty of homelessness. “For LGBTQ youth, the issue of family acceptance, and school safety and inclusion, are two key factors that lead to them being homeless, on the street or working at lower-income jobs and having difficulty with a survivable income as adults,” Garner said.

The coaltion is pushing for a B.C. Poverty Reduction Plan, which includes a higher minimum wages, higher welfare rates that are indexed into inflation, recommitting to building social housing within B.C., introduction of an affordable child care plan, and addressing structural barriers experienced by marginalized groups such as trans and queer youth.

Premier Christy Clark claimed that the BC Jobs plan would provide long-term jobs and opportunities for lasting economic benefit. Garner did not find that the plan was sufficient to live up to its promise for British Columbians. (See related article Province not planning to roll out poverty plan.)

“Most poor people in B.C. are already working,” Garner said. “They’ve already got jobs. So working poverty is a huge issue in B.C. If you look at the jobs plan, it hasn’t made any difference to poverty.”

According to Garner, once you are in a life of poverty, the cycle becomes hard to break.

Garner added that those that are currently living in poverty are already working one job while trying to climb out of poverty. “Welfare is set so low that you’re [subjected to] a life of survival. It becomes hard to get back into the labour force, to get back to housing. If you do manage to get a minimum wage job, you’re still in a life of poverty.”

Poverty among queer and trans youth is not a hopeless case, though. In May 2014, Garner addressed the Vancouver School Board (VSB) about the lack of acceptance and education on the issue. Garner had submitted a proposition to the VSB for a B.C. Safer Schools coalition.

Garner said the VSB could directly ease the long-term effects of queer and trans homelessness. Indirectly, educating families on acceptance, offering parental guidance and gender inclusivity in schools would help keep queer and trans youth from living on the streets.

Working toward greater acceptance

“Two years after I left home, my mom told me that she’s had a girlfriend before,” Brennan said. “Over the years, my mom has gotten more accepting. If she told me that, I think I would have been able to talk to her and we would have bonded.”

Brennan’s story is not a hopeless case.

“There are people doing good things around this issue,” Garner said. In partnership with Brennan, there have been efforts to raise awareness about the resources and services available for youth.

These services can only provide so much, and so Garner encourages change in homes and schools that will lead to the elimination of trans and queer poverty.

With one in four LGBTQ youth forced out of their homes, perhaps, once educated about their children’s identity, parents and school boards alike may be on their way to eliminating the stigmatization and homelessness.