Homeless Youth Struggles to Build a Life in Chicago
John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative
Juan Gallaher lost his apartment because he turned 21.
By MERIBAH KNIGHT
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.
Multimedia
John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative
“I can't let the life I've got kill me before I get the life I want,” Mr. Gallaher said.
John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative
Advocates estimate that Chicago has up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of shelter on any given night.
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.
In 2010, under the care of the Howard Brown Health Center in Lakeview, Mr. Gallaher began taking hormone injections to make the transition from female to male. Every month he must somehow save the $35 it costs to continue taking them. On Nov. 23, 2010, he officially changed his name from Paige to Juan, records show. In February Mr. Gallaher gave up his daughter for adoption after child services was called when he left her in the care of a friend while he was in the hospital. Mr. Gallaher chose an open adoption, not wanting to place her in the child welfare system where he spent much of his youth.
As part of an independent living program, Mr. Gallaher lived in an apartment in Melrose Park. He loved the western suburb so much he named it Hope City. But after aging out of the child welfare system in October he lost the apartment — and was on the streets again.
Nearly 40 percent of youths who reach 21 and lose access to foster care experience some form of homelessness, according to a 2010 Midwest study by the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. Additionally, 2009 data show Illinois with more foster youths aging out than in previous years, up 1.2 percent, while nationally it has gone down by nearly half of 1 percent.
“As soon as you’re 21, all the support is gone,” said Amy Dworsky, a senior researcher at Chapin Hall. “We live in a place where there is a big shortage of affordable housing, and we know these young people are not earning significant amounts of money. Their options are limited.”
Chicago, with its big city allure and a continuum of services, attracts runaway and homeless youths. Yet as the population grows, state and federal cuts are hacking away at budgets for outreach organizations.
A survey released Monday by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless reported that 55 percent of Illinois agencies administering homeless prevention grants said they would run out of money by Dec. 31. Last year, shelter programs in Illinois served 40,542 people, yet people were turned away 45,673 times because of insufficient resources, the survey said.
In the 2012 state budget, Gov. Pat Quinn approved $4.7 million in cuts, a 52 percent reduction of state outlays for shelters, emergency housing and transportation. Homeless advocates hope to persuade lawmakers to reverse the cuts Tuesday, the final day of this year’s legislative session.
“We want homeless youth to be heard. Too often they’re invisible,” said Anne Holcomb, a coordinator at the Night Ministry’s Open Door Shelter. “They’re even invisible when it comes to funding.”
Making It Work
For youths like Mr. Gallaher, the erosion of financing means he has less contact with social workers and spends more time wandering the streets, crashing on couches and fending for himself. He believes he is missing information about jobs, classes or other opportunities that might help him get on his feet.
Recently, sitting on a mattress on the floor at a friend’s apartment in West Pullman on the South Side, an area he and friends refer to as Ragtown, Mr. Gallaher recited his current motto: “This isn’t the life I want, but it’s the life I’ve got, and I can’t let the life I’ve got kill me before I get the life I want.”
Mr. Gallaher prides himself on his street savvy. The most prized of his few possessions — which include five decks of magic cards, a utility knife, a Dell computer and an MP3 player — is a fireproof briefcase containing labeled folders filled with resource pamphlets on transportation, housing, mental health, Internet cafes, jobs and food.
For Boystown’s homeless youth, Mr. Gallaher is a connector of sorts, a liaison between the services offered and the young people who need them. “If you need help,” he said, “you come to me. I’ll tell you where to go to get what you need.”
But that is getting harder, and Mr. Gallaher can make fewer referrals these days. “With all the budget cuts, there is not as much programming now,” Mr. Gallaher said. “It’s a lot different.”
On Nov. 16, Mr. Gallaher scraped together enough money to take out his partner — who goes by the name Genesis and like many homeless youths declines to give his full name — to celebrate his 20th birthday at Castle Buffet at Belmont and Kimball. Inside, Genesis, Mr. Gallaher and his two “nephews” declared an eating contest. They piled plates high with fried shrimp, pizza, stir-fry and sweet buns, and ate French fries with chopsticks. Laughing, they set napkins on fire so Genesis could blow them out to make a wish.
They talked about going to Hope City after dinner, but wound up in Boystown, wandering along Halsted Street and goofing off. Passers-by glared. Some crossed the street.
But it was too cold to walk all night, and it was too late to get into a nearby shelter. They would head back to the West Pullman apartment.
Hope City would have to wait.
“Tomorrow,” said Mr. Gallaher as he walked toward the train, his MP3 player piping Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” into his earphones. “Tomorrow we’ll go to Hope City.”
No comments:
Post a Comment