September’s Rolling Stone magazine highlighted the growing problem of LGBT Youth Homelessness in the U.S. The Center for American Progress estimates that between 320,000 and 400,000 LGBT youth experience homelessness at some point each year in this country; overall they comprise about 20 percent of the overall homeless youth population.
Homelessness is devastating. First, it is a painful, often terrifying, traumatic experience for people who become homeless and for those who love them. Second, homelessness is an overwhelming social problem—one that weakens us as a nation and lays bare the underlying injustices that erode our country’s foundation. Homelessness does not represent a type of person or a set of bad decisions by an individual. Instead, it reflects the crossroads of all that is broken in our society: poverty; lack of affordable housing; unemployment; jobs that don’t pay livable wages; poor health care access; inadequate services for mental health, substance use, and trauma; an educational system that allows too many young people to slip through the cracks; fragmented families and dangerous neighborhoods; violence and victimization; racism; and social exclusion.
