The iconic Jacob Riis photo of immigrant children sleeping on the steps, huddled together for warmth in one of New York City’s worst slums was taken in 1890, and was used by Riis and others as part of a campaign to deal with the execrable poverty, death, and disease facing many immigrants to the United States.
Well over 100 years have passed since Riis crusaded and muck-raked. In the midst of plenty here in the U.S., living on the streets is a way of life for young people who are homeless. They are often referred to as “street kids.”
Laura Rena Murray, who was once one of those street kids, has written a powerful piece for Al Jazeera titled, “Philly’s invisible youth: The child welfare system continues to fail homeless kids — just as it did this reporter 17 years ago,” which everyone should read.
I was 14 the first time I knocked on the door of a shelter in Center City, 3 miles from where I grew up, in the City of Brotherly Love. I was holding a pamphlet my high school counselor had given me, which spelled out “Teen Hot Lines” in bold letters on the front. It was after midnight and I had run away from violence at home.
“How old are you?” asked the woman who opened the door. Sixteen, I lied. She said I had to be 18 to stay there. I had to leave.
When the door shut behind me, I took off running, afraid the woman would alert the police. It was the first and last time I tried to stay at a shelter.
In March, I returned to my hometown to search for youth like me. It had been 17 years since my first night on the streets, but I was shocked to find little has changed — and in many ways, the situation has gotten worse.
When you go to visit relatives or have friends over for dinner during the holidays, perhaps having given a donation to a food bank or a soup kitchen so that those people without homes might have a holiday meal, remember this:
Homelessness is a year-round problem.
Homeless Youth and Teen Statistics & Facts
- Approximately 1.7 million young people call the streets home every year.
- Nearly 20,000 homeless people 24 years old and younger live in New York City.
- Children under 18 accounted for 39% of the homeless population.
- Of that number, approximately 42% were younger than age 5.
- Approximately 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBT.
- Every year, approximately 5,000 homeless young people will die because of assault, illness, or suicide while trying to survive.
Who are these homeless street children in the U.S. and where are they?
Street children in the United States tend to stay in the state, 83% do not leave their state of origin. If they leave, street children are likely to end up in large cities, notably New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. Street children are predominantly Caucasian and female in the United States, and 42% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).
I’ve had my own experiences living an working with street kids in New York City. During a period of time when I was homeless because of a partner abuse situation, I took part in the beginning of the squatters movement on New York City’s Lower East Side, in the section known as Alphabet City. I was a young adult—not a teen—and became a kind of den mother to a group of young, mostly white runaways who wound up in the building we had taken over on 9th Street, between Avenue C and Avenue D. Years later, as part of an HIV/AIDS research intervention project, I also spent a lot of time with young people on the streets, though this group was Puerto Rican. Several colleagues were working with and doing ethnography with street youth on the Lower East Side. Some of their work is included in Kristina Gibson’s Street Kids: Homeless Youth, Outreach, and Policing New York's Streets.
Street outreach workers comb public places such as parks, vacant lots, and abandoned waterfronts to search for young people who are living out in public spaces, if not always in the public eye. Street Kids opens a window to the largely hidden world of street youth, drawing on their detailed and compelling narratives to give new insight into the experiences of youth homelessness and youth outreach. Kristina Gibson argues that the enforcement of quality of life ordinances in New York City has spurred hyper-mobility amongst the city’s street youth population and has serious implications for social work with homeless youth. Youth in motion have become socially invisible and marginalized from public spaces where social workers traditionally contact them, jeopardizing their access to the already limited opportunities to escape street life. The culmination of a multi-year ethnographic investigation into the lives of street outreach workers and ‘their kids’ on the streets of New York City, Street Kids illustrates the critical role that public space regulations and policing play in shaping the experience of youth homelessness and the effectiveness of street outreach.
Her book has a special significance to me because she includes the story of one of the young people I got to know while doing my own street research. He was the friend of a young gay black Puerto Rican youth who I will call “Gabriel.” Gabriel was living on the streets, and I had developed a close relationship with him. He had a friend named Ali. I knew him both as Ali and as “Luscious.”
In the early morning hours of December 5, 1997, a young man was shot and killed on a sidewalk in East Harlem. His name was Ali Forney, and he was a street kid. In New York City and most urban areas across the United States, public violence involving street kids is not groundbreaking news. Nearly five thousand unaccompanied young people die each year in the United States, primarily from violence, illness, and suicide. Even though public violence involving more affluent young people shocked the city in the late 1990s, Ali Forney’s death did not merit even a paragraph in the next day’s newspapers. According to Carl Siciliano, a social worker who knew Ali: “I remember when there were one or two murders of young people in the city. … there was a white social work student who was murdered in Prospect Heights. It was on the cover of the paper for days and days. These kids would die and there’d be nothing. Nothing.” Ali’s was the third violent death of a street kid in six months.
Carl Siciliano tells Ali’s story in this video.
Ali’s murder may have never been solved, but his name lives on at the Ali Forney Center thanks to Siciliano, the center’s executive director.
Committed to saving the lives of LGBTQ youth, in 2002 Carl Siciliano founded the Ali Forney Center (AFC) in memory of Ali. Since AFC's launch with just 6 beds in a church basement, the organization has grown to become the largest agency dedicated to LGBTQ homeless youth in the country -- assisting nearly 1,400 youth per year through 10 housing sites and a multi-purpose Drop-In Center.
Our mission is to provide LGBTQ young people housing and a continuum of supportive services to help them thrive and prepare them for independent living.
AFC has been heralded for our full continuum of care approach to services for LGBTQ homeless youth. AFC's founder, Carl Siciliano, was named a White House Champion of Change by President Obama citing the wide recognition AFC's programs have received for their quality and innovation.
The National Network for Youth (NN4Y) is the nation’s leading organization advocating at the federal level to educate the public and policymakers about the needs of homeless and disconnected youth. We are a membership organization of service providers, state agencies, coalitions, faith-based organizations, advocates and individuals who work towards our vision of a world where vulnerable and homeless youth can escape the dangers of the streets and access safety, youth-appropriate services, hope and healing.
Another is StandUp for Kids:
StandUp For Kids is a national non-profit charity. Our organization was founded in 1990 by a group of volunteers in San Diego, CA. Starting from a program in one city, StandUp For Kids has grown to a national organization with operations in many states and the District of Columbia. We remain a nearly all-volunteer organization.
StandUp For Kids continuously strives to provide life-saving and outreach services to homeless, street kids and at-risk youth. StandUp For Kids is primarily a nighttime program, with volunteers walking the streets in the evening, distributing food, clothing, hygiene products, distributing resource information, referrals, and offering an 888 number where the kids can reach a StandUp For Kids counselor in each of our cities nationwide.
StandUp For Kids teaches youth the basic "life skills" so that they can survive off the streets, helping to build a foundation away from the streets and street life.
So what can you do?
For starters you can become aware of what is being done, and spread the word to friends and family. There is currently a national campaign for youth shelter, which you can become a part of.
Over 500,000 young people experience homelessness every year throughout our nation. Despite that staggering figure, there are only 4,000 youth shelter beds across the country. This forces the majority of homeless youth to struggle for survival on the streets.
The National Campaign for Youth Shelter is a collaborative effort between the Ali Forney Center and the National Coalition for the Homeless to build a grassroots movement demanding a national commitment to house all the homeless youth in the country.
And lastly, take time out and sign this pledge:
I Believe That ALL Youth Deserve a Home
I want to join the movement and stand in solidarity with activists from across the country to demand a federal response to the youth homelessness crisis! We need more beds and supportive services for young people immediately while we work to find long-term solutions that ensure that no one continues to live without a home. I will lend my voice to this cause for all young people who have found themselves in the vulnerable position of being homeless.