I Was An Intern*…

And I was asked to attend a meeting and the meeting left a lasting impression on me.

LGBTQ kids kicked out with nowhere to go; Life on the streets

Kicked out, surviving by living on park benches & truck stops, these kids face a terrifying reality of discrimination, isolation, & violence

The Los Angeles Blade

By Simha Hadda

April 17, 2023

With homophobia, bullying, harassment, and extremist hate on the rise, both from the government and civilians alike, queer youth of today are facing a torrent of obstacles leading to a devastating increase in mental health crises.

Even more devastating is the number of queer youth who are facing these challenges while homeless. Kicked out of their homes and living on park benches and truck stops, these kids face a terrifying reality of discrimination, isolation, and violence. 

The Rainbow Youth Project a nonprofit based out of Indiana serves as a godsend for many of these LGBTQ+ youth. The organization provides mental health, financial, housing, services and counseling assistance to homeless LGBTQ+ youth under the age of eighteen across the nation.

Kicked Out with Nowhere to Go

Seventeen-year-old Rainbow Youth Project clients, KV from Monrovia, California, and Mayra from just outside Houston, Texas, shared their stories of living on the streets after their families kicked them out for being queer.

You have to understand, my background is from a white suburban middle class town. In high school we had zero minorities. So when I was interning I was asked to attend a meeting of the Judicial Branch Court Support Services Division meeting. I went into the meeting cold, not really understand what the meeting was about.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Mayra told The Blade. “I couldn’t call any of my friends because everybody was making fun of me and threatening to beat me up. I just kind of hung out in the park for a couple of days. After a few days, I realized that was still my best option. I just fell into staying on the streets.”

Mayra took to sleeping in the bathrooms of truck travel stops, sporadically getting handouts of leftover food from restaurants such as Subway and Cinnabon.

What the meeting was about was a runaway trans girl. Her parents threw her out when she came out as trans, and the meeting talked about what happened after that.

 “The first thing I had to learn was safety,” said KV. “There are some pretty bad people out there. I got beat up a couple of times because I was in somebody’s space. It’s almost like a game. You have to learn the rules of the game like this is Joe’s space over here. Even if his stuff isn’t here, you can’t be in that area, or he is going to get mad. People don’t understand even if you are were living in a park, your space is like your house, and you can’t go into somebody else’s house. Learning that was kind of hard. I had heard about tent cities and all of that, but I was never really a part of it before.”

The girl ended up sleeping in the Bridgeport bus station where she was “befriended” by a pimp who took her under his wings… and forced her on heroin… and pimped her out.

“It was a tough thing, and I’m not proud of what I had to do to get the things I needed,” KV told The Blade. “But I think the thing that shocked me about it more than even me having to do this was how many kids were doing it and how many people were looking for it. I mean, people every day, every 15 minutes to 30 minutes, would come up to me looking for kids for sex. I’d be walking down Santa Monica or just sitting at a bus stop, and somebody would pull over and say, ‘What do you do for 50? What do you do for 20? That happens all the time.”

She got busted. She ratted out the pimp. He put a contract out on her.

“Rainbow Youth Project saved my life,” KV told the Blade, who found out about RYP through a friend. “My goal was to get off the streets. I had had enough. Even after a week, I knew I had to do something. I called Rainbow Youth Project. I wasn’t expecting too much. I spoke to Brandon. Brandon asked me where I was, and I said LA. He said, ‘What if I told you we have a counselor we work with at UCLA that might be able to help you.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I ain’t got no way out to UCLA. No insurance, none of that stuff. He said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got you.’ The next day, he sent an Uber for me that took me up to see the counselor at UCLA. They already had an overnight package that had blankets and socks and underwear stuff that I didn’t have and a phone. And I’ve been in touch with them ever since. That was in June.”

Court Support Services Division was looking for a place to take her in, a shelter, foster parents, someone to help. Someone to help a 16 years old drug addict… with a contract out on her.

LGBTQ youth are overrepresented among young people experiencing homelessness and housing instability in the United States. This elevated risk of homelessness and housing instability has detrimental effects on LGBTQ youths’ mental health.

Do you know what it is like when I hear all these conservative right-wing politicians come down against trans kids knowing that this is what those politicians are committing trans children to by not allowing proper healthcare. Knowing when politicians pass laws forcing teachers to out students to their parents they are forcing teenagers out on the street.

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*I was going for my MSW and my second year internship was with a LGBTQ family and youth services organizations.