NYC To Open New Homeless Shelter In Effort To Aid LGBTQ Youth

NEW YORK, NY — New York City will to open its first shelter for homeless youth as old as 24 as part of a $9.5 million initiative to help struggling LGBTQ teens and young adults. The shelter is one piece of an effort to tackle homelessness among LGBTQ youth, who make up a disproportionately large share of the city's homeless young people.

"So many of us will thankfully never know the pain of having to leave our family, our home, because we don't have any other option, because we don't know how else to survive," said first lady Chirlane McCray, who's spearheading the effort. "It's up to us to do everything we can do prevent damage to the health and the fortunes of our young people."

The 20-bed shelter, set to open by the end of the year, will be a haven for LGBTQ young people who face homelessness and mental health problems at higher rates than their peers, officials said.

Even though under 10 percent of young people identify as LGTBQ, nearly 60 percent of youth in city shelters and 30 percent of those living on the streets identified as such in a 2015 survey, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said.

"Stopping the cycle of homelessness in its infancy is one of the best ways to ensure homelessness doesn’t become a lifelong chronic problem for our young people," Johnson said.

The shelter will be the first run by the city's Department of Youth & Community Development, or DYCD, to house homeless New Yorkers up to age 24.

Until this year, state law said youth living in such shelters could be no older than 20, DYCD Commissioner Bill Chong said. The City Council passed a law in March requiring the city to expand homeless youth services to serve people as old as 24 after a change in state law offered more flexibility, officials said.

The city will pick a service provider for the shelter in the next two to three months who will then identify a location for it, Chong said.

The city plans to spend $9.5 million over the next three years on the shelter and several other initiatives that aim to stop LGBTQ teens from becoming homeless in the first place.

Three of the city's youth "drop-in" centers will expand to 24-hour service, meaning LGBTQ teens and young adults in all five boroughs will be able to access services such as counseling and health care referrals at any time of day, officials said.

Two new clinics in Harlem and Central Brooklyn will offer young people medication that staves off HIV and other sexual health services, McCray said.

The city also plans to expand training programs that help parents accept and support their LGBTQ kids; create bilingual services for Spanish-speaking families; and commission the first-ever study of the city's foster care population, which will include questions about sexual orientation and gender.

"Our unprecedented new investments in family support will help us get at the root causes of youth homelessness," McCray said.

(Lead image: People cheer for marchers during the annual New York City Gay Pride Parade in June 2017. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)