TAMPA–According to Florida’s Department of Children and Families, a disproportionate amount of homeless teens in Florida and across the country in 2014 were LGBT youth.
Now plans are underway to give them somewhere to go in Pinellas County. “There is a federal bureaucratic term for the young people who will be served here—unaccompanied youth. But they are in reality, homeless,” said St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman at a recent ground-breaking for Starting Right Now, a facility for homeless teens scheduled to open in January 2016.
A 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services gathered data from 11 cities around the country, including Port St. Lucie in Florida.
“Honestly, I would say looking at the homeless population that we see come through here many more of them are LGBT identified,” said Jeremiah Kerr, outreach and development coordinator at the Ybor Youth Clinic in Tampa.
The clinic is in a gray brick building with an interior of modern furniture and oversized art, at the end of a street of busy bars, restaurants and nightclubs. It provides treatment for STDs, family planning, and substance abuse and mental health services to homeless youth. They serve youth between the ages of 13 and 24, but they have helped kids as young as 11.
Christopher Rodriguez, now 20, left home at 17, never thinking he’d become homeless. Partly because of his sexuality, his relationship with his father grew strained, he said, and so he felt he had no choice.
“At that age I felt like my father would’ve hated me as a person, would’ve had no respect for me as a person, would not have loved me as a person, and would have pretty much just wiped me away from his life as a person, if I had came out to him and told him,” he said.
Rodriguez left on his own, but the most common reason for homelessness, cited by half of teens, was being asked by a parent or caregiver to leave. Less than a third said they had the option to go back home.
“Or the neglect was just so bad that it felt like the only option. They might as well have been told to leave,” said Kerr.
Almost a quarter of all homeless teens said they left home because of abuse or because of their caretaker’s alcohol or drug problem.
And while more than 60 percent of homeless youth said they were victimized by threats, robbery, or physical or sexual assaults, Kerr says these problems sometimes happen in the shelters designed to help protect them.
“This is absolutely something we see as a common occurrence among the youth that we serve. And unfortunately for many of them, especially the LGBT youth, they are being victimized by their homeless peers as well. I think right now the biggest issue that we have is that we have no safe place for them to go,” said Kerr.
With the help of Kerr, Rodriguez now has a steady job and a place of his own. He dreams of buying a car and starting his own business.
“So I’d love to have a family one day… I would love to go to church every Sunday with my children and my family,” said Rodriguez.
M.S. Butler of WUSF contributed to this report.
