ROC
04-14-2013, 11:48 PM
Dressed in black baggy jeans, a gray tank top and a Harley Davidson cap skewed backward, Juan Gallaher stood under a cool late-fall drizzle devouring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the Night Ministry’s homeless-youth-outreach van at Belmont Avenue and Halsted Street.
“I can't let the life I've got kill me before I get the life I want,” Mr. Gallaher said.
It was 8:30 p.m., and Mr. Gallaher was getting his first meal of the day. But he has gone so long and so often without food that hunger is now a faint feeling, he said, though he knows he needs to eat.
Three weeks earlier, he had turned 21. While that is a happy milestone for most young people, for Mr. Gallaher — a ward of the state since 2006 — it meant he was no longer eligible for services from the Illinois child welfare system. As a result, he lost his apartment and his subsidies.
“I’ve learned in my life that nothing is stable,” Mr. Gallaher said. So he focuses on the fundamentals: getting a free dinner and finding a place to sleep — maybe under a bridge, in an abandoned house or crowded with other homeless youths on the floor of a friend’s small apartment.
With a state unemployment rate of 10.1 percent, combined with a lack of affordable housing and shelter beds, an increase in homeless young people in Chicago is putting stress on an overburdened social-support system that is facing deep cuts in budgets and programs.
Advocates estimate that Chicago has up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of shelter on any given night. But there are just 209 youth shelter beds available citywide — only 5 percent of the approximately 4,000 in the city’s shelters. And with local youth shelters and drop-in centers turning away more young people than ever, providers said, young homeless people are left to navigate for themselves in a system created to meet the needs of adults.
Homeless youths are in need of nurturing, they are easy targets for crime and abuse, and some are prone to commit crimes. This makes the task of helping them costly and complex. Beyond basic housing, there is a need for services that can help them obtain an education and job skills that could help lead them toward society’s mainstream.
Mr. Gallaher also is a transgender person, and a former ward of the state — both of which, studies show, make him far more likely to experience homelessness.
Experts say that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make up a disproportionate number of the homeless youth; they represent as much as 40 percent of the national homeless population.
Many youths with gender-identity issues have been kicked out of their homes or have run away. In Chicago, most flock to Boystown, the magnet for young gay men and lesbians along Halsted Street on the North Side, looking for ad hoc family structures born of the street — street moms, street dads, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters. Some even call themselves twins.
A History of Abuse
Mr. Gallaher, the second oldest of 11 children, likes to say he came from “a hole under a rock in the middle of nowhere.” Birth records show he was born in Duplin County, N.C., on Oct. 2, 1990, Paige Francis Gallaher.
He said he grew up homeless, sleeping in Dumpsters and trees with his older brother and his drug-addicted mother. His tales of abuse are harrowing: rape, beatings, forced prostitution. For years, Mr. Gallaher struggled with his gender identity. Though he was born female, he felt more comfortable wearing boys’ clothes, lifting weights and passing for male.
To Mr. Gallaher, a male identity was intrinsic. To his family it was “an abomination of nature,” he recalls his mother saying. Eventually they shut him out, and now he has no contact with his siblings or his mother.
Mr. Gallaher was sent to live with a relative in Illinois, but more abuse and more running away followed, he said. Eventually, records show, the state took custody and placed him in a group home. He bounced around living programs and, still a woman at age 19, gave birth to a daughter.
“I can't let the life I've got kill me before I get the life I want,” Mr. Gallaher said.
It was 8:30 p.m., and Mr. Gallaher was getting his first meal of the day. But he has gone so long and so often without food that hunger is now a faint feeling, he said, though he knows he needs to eat.
Three weeks earlier, he had turned 21. While that is a happy milestone for most young people, for Mr. Gallaher — a ward of the state since 2006 — it meant he was no longer eligible for services from the Illinois child welfare system. As a result, he lost his apartment and his subsidies.
“I’ve learned in my life that nothing is stable,” Mr. Gallaher said. So he focuses on the fundamentals: getting a free dinner and finding a place to sleep — maybe under a bridge, in an abandoned house or crowded with other homeless youths on the floor of a friend’s small apartment.
With a state unemployment rate of 10.1 percent, combined with a lack of affordable housing and shelter beds, an increase in homeless young people in Chicago is putting stress on an overburdened social-support system that is facing deep cuts in budgets and programs.
Advocates estimate that Chicago has up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of shelter on any given night. But there are just 209 youth shelter beds available citywide — only 5 percent of the approximately 4,000 in the city’s shelters. And with local youth shelters and drop-in centers turning away more young people than ever, providers said, young homeless people are left to navigate for themselves in a system created to meet the needs of adults.
Homeless youths are in need of nurturing, they are easy targets for crime and abuse, and some are prone to commit crimes. This makes the task of helping them costly and complex. Beyond basic housing, there is a need for services that can help them obtain an education and job skills that could help lead them toward society’s mainstream.
Mr. Gallaher also is a transgender person, and a former ward of the state — both of which, studies show, make him far more likely to experience homelessness.
Experts say that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make up a disproportionate number of the homeless youth; they represent as much as 40 percent of the national homeless population.
Many youths with gender-identity issues have been kicked out of their homes or have run away. In Chicago, most flock to Boystown, the magnet for young gay men and lesbians along Halsted Street on the North Side, looking for ad hoc family structures born of the street — street moms, street dads, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters. Some even call themselves twins.
A History of Abuse
Mr. Gallaher, the second oldest of 11 children, likes to say he came from “a hole under a rock in the middle of nowhere.” Birth records show he was born in Duplin County, N.C., on Oct. 2, 1990, Paige Francis Gallaher.
He said he grew up homeless, sleeping in Dumpsters and trees with his older brother and his drug-addicted mother. His tales of abuse are harrowing: rape, beatings, forced prostitution. For years, Mr. Gallaher struggled with his gender identity. Though he was born female, he felt more comfortable wearing boys’ clothes, lifting weights and passing for male.
To Mr. Gallaher, a male identity was intrinsic. To his family it was “an abomination of nature,” he recalls his mother saying. Eventually they shut him out, and now he has no contact with his siblings or his mother.
Mr. Gallaher was sent to live with a relative in Illinois, but more abuse and more running away followed, he said. Eventually, records show, the state took custody and placed him in a group home. He bounced around living programs and, still a woman at age 19, gave birth to a daughter.