When coming out as gay leads to homelessness

• In 2013, there were 1,721 homeless youth (up to age 24) in Hamilton County.
• Factors that put LGBT youth at risk of homelessness include bullying, "couch surfing" that leads to unstable housing, family rejection, trauma, abuse, mental health issues and substance abuse.
• Tuesday, a Coaltion of Hamilton County organizations will release a plan to reduce homelessness among LGBT youth.
• The plan calls for raising community awareness about the needs of LGBT youth, improving data collection on sexual orientation, better screening to see which youth are likely to become homeless and increased support for stable housing, education, employment and well-being of LGBT youth.

Dedrick Hall was 17 when he acknowledged to himself that he was bisexual.

When he shared his identity with friends, classmates at Elder High School and his two sisters, he found support. Or, at least, acceptance.

Then he told his mother.

"She just didn't approve at all. She was very upset about the situation. She said, 'You can't stay at my house any more. You have to find someplace else to go.'"

"I thought, she didn't mean that. She'll change her mind. Then it was like, she's serious."

Dedrick, once voted Most Optimistic at Elder, had never seen it coming. "I felt betrayed," he says. "I felt like, of anybody, it would be my mom to accept me."

But initially she couldn't, and at the end of his sophomore year, Dedrick was forced to move out of his home. Over the next four years, he stayed with a friend, spent some weekends with relatives, struggled to complete high school, nearly dropped out of college and finally found temporary housing at the Lighthouse Sheakley Center for Youth.

While it may have been a surprise to Dedrick, the connection between coming out and homelessness isn't a surprise to those who work with at-risk youth.

"The kids who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender make up 15 percent of the population of kids we're serving," says Bob Mecum, president and CEO of Lighthouse Youth Services. "We've worked with tens of thousands of youth over 40-plus years, and there has always been an over-representation of GLT youth."

Nationally, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth make up 5 percent to 7 percent of all youth, but as much as 20 percent to 40 percent of the country's 600,000-plus homeless youth. Some studies show that half of those who reveal their homosexuality get a negative response from their families, and more than a quarter are kicked out of their homes. Reducing youth homelessness requires better understanding the challenges facing LGBT youth, experts say.

"But this is a group – unlike, for example, veterans – that has had no real advocates," says Kevin Finn, executive director of Strategies to End Homelessness.

Until now. Until here.

In April, Cincinnati was one of two cities the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development invited to develop plans for reducing homelessness among LGBT youth. It chose Cincinnati, in part, because of its ability to track homeless youth and because it has a record of building collaboration around the issue of homelessness.

Tuesday, a group of 15 local organizations – including Hamilton County Job and Family Services, the Cincinnati Police Department, Lighthouse Youth Advisory Council and the YWCA – will submit their plan for federal approval. If they get it, they'll begin implementing the plan in October.

Tevin Brunner says Cincinnati was the right choice.

"Cincinnati deserves to be a national model. I thought I was going to be homeless forever until I moved here. Then I saw a light at the end of the tunnel."

After aging out of foster care, Tevin, who is gay, had no home to which to go. The grandmother he had once lived with was ill and no other relative was willing to take him in.

He slept in paper recycling bins, under bridges, on rooftops, in the stairwells of buildings on the campus of Marshall University. He ate out of Dumpsters and stole change from charitable wishing wells. "I thought, 'I'm stealing other people's wishes, but I'm hungry,'" he says. "I didn't think they'd mind if their wishes didn't come true."

Tevin moved from Dayton, Ohio, to Louisville, to Huntington, West Virginia, before coming to Cincinnati to stay with a cousin in March. Some moves put him with "random strangers." Other times he found a community of homeless youth and adults with whom to connect. He was kicked out by friends, endured days with no food. "I did what I had to do to survive – lie to people, beat up on people, rob people. I was at the lowest of the low, where you feel you can't come up."

But when staying with his cousin didn't work out, he spent 78 days at the Sheakley Center, where he received therapy, help obtaining a job and transportation to it.

Then Lighthouse Youth Services helped him get his own apartment – a dream come true for a 21-year-old who had lived in 17 foster homes, eight residential facilities, four group homes and spent nearly three years on the streets.

"Back then, I thought I'd still be bouncing around from place to place, and I'd have no job. Now I have my own apartment, I pay my own rent, I pay my own bills. My message for kids who are going through struggles with their identity is, as long as you love you for you and have faith, anything is possible."

Now Tevin says he's ready for his next step, applying to college and studying to be a special education teacher – "my dream from third grade." ■