Author: leilanwong

“Where am I going to go?” A Review of the Scholarly Discourse on Queer and Trans Youth Homelessness

In the case of homelessness, trans and queer youth compared to cisgender and straight youth disproportionately face homelessness because their identity has made living at home with their parents an unsafe or available option (Abramovich 2017, p.4). According to statistics drawn from the United States, LGBTQ2S identifying individuals make up 5-10% of the population, yet, make up 20-40% of homeless youth (Quintana 2010, p.6). Such statistics can be assumed as similar in the Canadian context. This website entry draws on the work of the recently published book of essays “Where am I going to go? Intersectional Approaches to Ending LGBTQ2S Youth Homelessness in Canada and the US” to articulate why shelter spaces developed solely for queer and trans youth are important. When I use the term queer and trans youth, I am referring to all queer and trans youth, with specific awareness of the two-fold marginalization of queer and trans of youth of colour. As articulated throughout “Where am I going to go?” and throughout the websites and newspaper articles dedicated to this topic, there is a recurring experience of youth homeless shelters and services being inaccessible and unsafe for queer and trans youth. Drawing on the work of Marlon Bailey, this entry argues that forging spaces of safety for queer and trans youth is necessary because these spaces are rarely available to them in existing cultural and social spaces (Bailey 2014, p.491).

As the publishers articulate, “the goal of this book is to take homelessness research and relevant policy findings to new audiences” (Abramovich 2017, p. III). While this book incorporates the research done across North America, due to the intention that dialogues introduced in this book will inform public and government funding and policy, it is relevant to future program development in Vancouver. This will in turn reflect the implementation of programs for queer and trans youth. With this understanding in mind, I provide an overview of the book’s strengths and limitations to illuminate how this research may influence and shape the government’s role in queer and trans homelessness services.

This book begins by arguing for the dismantling of the criminalization of homelessness (Abramovich 2017, p.X). In challenging discourses that frame homelessness as criminal behaviour, this book moves away from blaming individuals for their experience of homelessness, and fosters a critique of the structural factors that result in homelessness among queer and trans youth. To further destabilize power imbalances within mainstream discourses and program development around homelessness, the book works to center voices of homeless LGBTQ2S youth. For example, the scholars are informed by interviews and surveys with homeless LGBTQ2S youth.

Due to this website’s focus on queer and trans of colour events and services in Vancouver and the surrounding lower mainland, it is essential that this entry points to the lack of dialogue around the intersection of race. Within the books 22 essays, only 4 specifically focus on race; one on Indigenous youth in British Columbia and the other three on Black youth in the US.

This book was published in Toronto, but takes a translocal approach by presenting the role of scholars from across North America. Drawing on Bacchetta et al.’s work on the translocal (2015), this entry proposes that translocal networks between queer and trans youth dismantle normative frameworks for homelessness services. Furthermore, it is essential to acknowledge that homelessness is an experience of migration that occurs around the world. Many queer and trans youth that face homelessness have moved, be it from different countries or from a rural setting to the urban city of Vancouver. Therefore, while the homelessness situation in Vancouver is exacerbated by our current unaffordability, fentanyl crisis and socioeconomic inequalities, homelessness in Vancouver cannot be understood as simply a local issue. Ultimately, there are lessons to be learnt from the larger network of spaces researched in this book. As Bacchetta et al. (2015) argue, the interventions performed by queer and trans of colour foregrounds them as geographical subjects in local locations that are often open only to white cis/straight populations (p. 773). The work of providing shelter for queer and trans youth goes beyond providing physical safety. The act of giving youth permanent addresses opens the door for their ability to apply to jobs, school and social services. Further, these programs participate in “transformative placemaking” (Bacchetta et al. 2015, p. 773) whereby queer and trans youth of colour use their experience of “forced and voluntary (im)mobility, travels and translation” (p. 775) in their process of community (and) spaces making, and in doing so, ensure their presence in the city is not forgotten or pushed out by more privileged narratives or experiences.

Lastly, this entry acknowledges the complicated dynamic of homelessness services existing on unceded territory at the same time that the colonial project continues to dispossess Indigenous People’s from their land. Further, as the book states, Indigenous youth make up around 6% of Canada’s population, but statistics from surveys show they may be over half of all homeless youth (Saewyc 2017, p. 14). Contemporary homelessness and poverty amongst Indigenous bodies is a present day form of colonial dispossession and highlights that colonialism is an ongoing process.

References:

Abramovich, A., & Shelton, J. (2017). Letter to the reader. 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.

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.

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.

Quintana, N., Rosenthal, J, & Krehley, J. (2010). On the Streets The Federal Response to Gay and Transgender Homeless Youth. Retrieved from https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2010/06/pdf/lgbtyouthhomelessness.pdf

 

Canada’s First LGBTQ2S Youth Homelessness Program: A Look at RainCity Housing

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

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