Sexual minority youth speak out about homelessness

CrossCurrents

Abigail Pugh

At a downtown Toronto youth centre one recent evening, the summer’s worst rainstorm was raging outside. But around the table in the basement, nobody noticed. The group gathered there was eating spicy mango salad, catching up on news and sharing photos from previous meetings. They had met to discuss a complicated document they had co-created: a letter of intent, aiming to secure funds to launch a larger project.

Topics raised were large and complex (gender politics, mental health fundamentals, status, power and inequality), as well as more personal and specific (coping with the threat of eviction because a roommate isn’t paying rent, couch-surfing due to a recent breakup, painful complications from recent surgery).

This meeting marked the “end of the beginning” of a joint initiative between Toronto’s Shout Clinic, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), a youth consultant and several youth informants. The initiative - Queer Youth Speak - has sought to explore what life is like for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer youth facing multiple vulnerabilities: being young, experiencing substance use or mental health issues and struggling to find or maintain safe and affordable housing.

Participants refined, through painstaking research and discussion, the most crucial research priorities facing this diverse population. Their findings? Nathan, a participant, puts it best: “Income and housing are the biggest stressors in life. If you’re youth and look queer, it’s hard.”

The project started in 2005 with an enabling grant from the Wellesley Central Health Corporation. With a budget of $8,500, Queer Youth Speak’s intent was ambitious. “We wanted to bridge the gap between lived experience and professional experience - to bring the two together in an equitable and inclusive way,” says project co-ordinator Melanie Ollenberg.

The founding shout/CAMH team used participatory action research to meet its goals. After a disappointing experience using focus groups to recruit youth, the team changed tack and decided to invite Ayden Scheim, himself a member of the target population, to partner with them to reach out to youth in one-on-one consultation sessions. Once these sessions - 40 in all - were finished, the team created a steering committee to analyze its findings.

What were steering committee meetings like? “Heated,” “engaged” and “intense,” according to youth participants. Logically so, says Nathan: “That’s how we learned to survive when we didn’t have any help. Whether it’s sex work, drugs, eating out of garbage cans - that’s what we’re passionate about fixing.”

Information-gathering wasn’t the only outcome. “The grant was both to increase the capacity of the community and that of agencies to help the community,” says Ollenberg. Adrian, one of the youth, says, “I got to know interesting people and learned how to use wording (in written documents).”

The “non-profit-speak” was initially intimidating for Nathan: “I was nervous; it was the same feeling as at school, and it brought back memories. I have add [attention deficit disorder] and a reading and learning disability and the group was talking about things like letters of intent, grants and research.” Most of his fears were calmed after a couple of meetings: “There’d be good suggestions, like a reading corner (where steering committee members could read aloud to each other). To decide on our highest research priorities, we used big chart paper and red sticker dots as a voting system. It was innovative.”

This CrossCurrents reporter - heterosexual, adequately housed and hardly “youth” at 37 - had little idea what to expect from the meeting that evening in the basement at shout. An initial go around, however, defied the cliché that these youth were stuck in a rut. Quite the opposite: Constant change and evolution seemed to define their lives. Two proudly announced plans to return to school and one told of his new job. A couple had come through recent health crises. For many, albeit still insecurely housed or facing discrimination, staying at a shelter was a thing of the past. Nathan, for example, has moved into a two-bedroom apartment, where he hopes the transphobia he experienced from his last landlady will become a distant memory.

If its advanced research funding bid is successful, Queer Youth Speak will live on. Having now identified housing and income as barriers to health, stakeholders will devise an expanded research project and identify strategies to improve lives. The final report notes: “In future projects, the ideal is to start with the (steering committee) so they can be involved at every stage because they have so much to offer the research process.”

Christine O’Rourke, a health promoter with shout, and part of the youth initiative, agrees. “The youth that worked on this project have taught me so much about youth empowerment and the meaning of true community-based research collaboration. Also it was so refreshing to work with a team at CAMH that doesn’t just ‘talk the talk’ about community-based participatory action research, but actually ‘walks the walk.’

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