In January 2015, RainCity Housing in Vancouver B.C., opened Canada’s first shelter program aimed to support LGBTQ2S youth experiencing homelessness. While I agree with frustration surrounding the lack of resources for LGBTQ2S youth, in this entry I outline some of the positive steps taken by RainCity Housing. First, utilizing Housing First practices, the program recognizes that homelessness is not only an economic phenomenon, but is a social issue (Munro 2017, p.144). Following the Housing First framework, RainCity moves away from neoliberal frameworks of shelter programs by reducing the barriers LGBTQ2S youth face in accessing their services. For example, Munro et al. explain that the youth are not required to be substance free (2017, p.146), abstinent, on medication for mental-health diagnosis (2017, p.147) or working towards reunification with their families (Hyslop 2015). These tactics are seldomly used in shelter organizations, and are even more rare amongst work with youth (Munro 2017, p.148).
Secondly, while RainCity itself is not a queer oriented organization, the hiring tactics used by RainCity’s LGBTQ2S youth program is commendable. The staff for the LGBTQ2S youth services all identify as Indigenous, two-spirit, trans and/or queer (Munro 2017, p.149). Furthermore, in RainCity’s efforts at space making for LGBTQ2S youth, the presence of mutual support between staff and clients who have gone through similar experiences destabilizes power differentials within shelter services. Drawing on Bailey’s scholarship on space making by and for Black and Latina/o LGBT people in Detroit, the significance of space making processes by RainCity Housing is evident. Trans and queer youth often experience homelessness because living at home with their parents has become an unsafe or unavailable due to their identities (Abramovich 2017, p.4). One of the fundamental ways RainCity promotes safe space making is by fostering youth relationships with adults who have shared experiences with the youth. Though located in different cities, Bailey’s discourse on space making highlights that through the process of forging spaces of safety, in the Vancouver context, RainCity Housing does the groundwork for producing spaces that have not been accessible to these youth previously (Bailey 2013, p.491).
While there are many positives of RainCity’s work, this entry calls for a critical approach, arguing that RainCity’s practices are can be critiqued, and have room for improvement. The youth program is open to youth aged 18-24. The Vancouver Courier and Tyee articles highlight three youth stories. These youth tell narratives of leaving home or facing homelessness for the first time between the ages of 14-16. In a 2014 BC Homeless and Street-Involved Youth survey on Indigenous homeless youth in BC, most participants had first become homeless or street-involved around age 12 or 13 (Saewyc 2017, p.22). RainCity’s structural barrier of age restrictions goes against the framework of Housing First, and simultaneously against the practices of creating spaces of safety for queer and trans people. By narrowing the accessibility of the services to youth 18 years of age or older, younger youth, who are ultimately more vulnerable, are forced into unsafe conditions based solely on structural barriers. Drawing on Cohen’s (2012) articulation of the difference between structural transformation and structural assimilation (p. 21) can be helpful in unpacking RainCity’s age restriction. In enforcing age restrictions, RainCity is failing to be accountable to queer and trans youth’s needs, and subsequently the organization’s commitment to structural transformation is weakened. The reason behind such restrictions needs also to be addressed. RainCity Housing receives a larger portion of its funding from Vancouver Coastal Health and BC Housing, both of which receive government funding. The agenda and services of RainCity Housing are ultimately shaped by the politics of these organizations. While the reasons for age restrictions can only be inferred, I suggest that they are implemented due to the complexity of housing minors under 18. Housing minors and adults together would present possible legal issues, and the age restriction ensures that RainCity Housing prevents illegal interactions between minors and adults.
Statistics show that in the first year 50% of the youth using the programs services identified as Indigenous (Munro 2017, p.137). Yet, neither the website, nor the newspaper articles, nor the scholarly article by Munro et al., provide an intersectional approach that incorporates racialized youth, beyond those that identify as Indigenous. By not developing their mandate and services to address the vulnerability of racialized queer and trans youth, RainCity subsequently inhabits exclusions, whereby gender and sexual normativities result in certain queer and trans bodies being viewed as worth supporting, while others are made more precarious. As Bacchetta et al. explain, “racial and colonial violence is often legitimized in the name of protecting [LGBT] spaces from dangerous and degenerate hateful others” (770). In the case of RainCity racial and colonial violence takes the form of a lack of racial dialogue that addresses the specific needs of different communities.
Additionally, discourses that lack proper interaction with an intersectional analysis, leaving out the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and sexuality, can participate in problematic dialogues that label racialized subjects to be uniformly straight and cis (Bacchetta et al. 2015, p. 769). In order to address the needs of Canada’s queer and trans youth, the organization needs to participate in racial discourses within the larger queer and trans dialogue. This website entry argues for future research that examines the unique ways that racialized youth experience lack of support from their family based on their sexual or gender identity.
References:
Abramovich, A., & Shelton, J. (Eds.). (2017). Where Am I Going to Go? Intersectional Approaches to Ending LGBTQ2S Youth Homelessness in Canada & the U.S. Toronto: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness Press.
Bacchetta, P., El-Tayeb F., & Haritaworn, J. (2015). Queer of colour formations and translocal spaces in Europe. Environment and Planning D, 33(5): 769-778.
Bailey, Marlon. (2014). Engendering space: ballroom culture and the spatial practice of possibility in Detroit. Gender, Place and Culture, 21(4): 489-507.
Housing First – Principles into Practice. (n.d.). Retrieved November 03, 2017, from http://www.raincityhousing.org/hf-p-into-p/
Hyslop, K. (2015, June 24). A Foot in the Door: Homeless Youth in and out of the Closet. The Tyee. Retrieved November 03, 2017, from https://thetyee.ca/News/2015/06/24/Homeless-Youth/
LGBTQ2S* Youth Housing. (n.d.). Retrieved November 03, 2017, from http://www.raincityhousing.org/what-we-do/lgbtq2s-youth-housing/
LGBTQ2S* Youth Housing – more info. (n.d.). Retrieved November 03, 2017, from http://www.raincityhousing.org/lgbtq2s-youth-housing-more-info/
Munro, A., Reynolds, V., & Townsend, M. (2017). Youth Wisdom, Harm Reduction & Housing First: RainCity Housing’s Queer & Trans Youth Housing Project. In A. Abramovich & J. Shelton (Eds.), Where am I going to go? Intersectional Approaches to Ending LGBTQ2S Youth Homelessness in Canada and the US (pp. 135-154). Toronto: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. Retrieved November 03, 2017.
Rossi, C. (2015, July 14). RainCity housing youth program provides more than shelter. Vancouver Courier. Retrieved November 3, 2017, from http://www.vancourier.com/news/raincity-housing-youth-program-provides-more-than-shelter-1.2000462
Saewyc, E., Mounsey, B., Tourand, J., Brunanski, D., Kirk, D., McNeil-Seymour, J., Shaughnessy, K., Tsuruda, S., & Clark, N. (2017). Homeless & Street-Involved Indigenous LGBTQ2S Youth in British Columbia: Intersectionality, Challenges, Resilience & Cues for Action. In. A. Abramovich & J. Shelton (Eds.), Where am I going to go? Intersectional Approaches to Ending LGBTQ2S Youth Homelessness in Canada & the U.S. (pp. 13-40). Toronto: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. Retrieved 6 Nov. 2017.
Wahab, A. (2016). Calling ‘Homophobia’ into Place (Jamaica). Interventions, 18(6), 908-928. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2015.1130641