Earlier this year, Focus Ireland, in partnership with BeLonG To, commissioned research into LGBT+ youth homelessness in Ireland, in order to gain greater insight into the ways in which young LGBT+ people enter, exit and experience homelessness. Ahead of the publication of the study’s findings, Stephen Moloney speaks with those researching, and working at the frontline of the issue.

Stephen Moloney

FOCUS Ireland

As BeLonG To’s Youth Work Manager for the last ten years, Gillian Brien finds herself at the coalface of the myriad issues facing LGBT+ young people, including homelessness. In the last three years she has witnessed the issue grow to the extent that BeLonG To’s ability to respond effectively is constrained by the wider homelessness pandemic. With a crisis as extensive as Ireland’s, she says, resources that could go towards specialist services, like those targeted towards LGBT+ young people, are quickly expended.

“We have always had people who previously never accessed our services arrive with a bag and say they need help,” she says. “We used to have places to refer LGBT+ young people; drug and alcohol free houses that could be accessed within 24 hours, a lot of which are low threshold services. But because the homelessness crisis in general has reached such a breaking point, we now have nowhere to refer these young people to. If someone was to open an LGBT+ youth safe house today, we’d have it filled in hours.”

Brien’s concern is shared by Paul Kelly, Project Leader for Youth Services with Focus Ireland, and someone who has been “banging on about the issue for the last ten years”.

“Imagine,” Kelly says, “you’ve gone into a 100-bed hostel: hierarchies exist. If I’m straight and discover that you’re not, I’m already in the shit and need to feel better about myself, so I’ll turn my attention to you. This creates an in-group out-group atmosphere. Moreover, when a young LGBT+ person enters homelessness… they’ll repress or hide who they are. I frequently see it in my work. They need a safe space where they can be their true selves.”

Kelly speaks too of the need for the system to make LGBT+ young people feel safe lest they disengage and fall into an unfortunate but too common trajectory of alcohol and drug use, or crime.

Although there has been no research into the extent of LGBT+ youth homeless in Ireland in terms of raw numbers, international research around the issue, from countries including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, sees LGBT+ young people overrepresented in homelessness by at least 22 percent of the total number, and up to 43 percent. It’s reasonable to expect that the situation here isn’t entirely dissimilar.

One would be forgiven for struggling to reconcile what remains a grim reality for young LGBT+ people today with the alleged advances made in personal freedoms, rights, public discourse and media portrayals over the last two decades. Kelly rewinds to 2015, and paints a jarring picture: “In the two weeks after marriage equality, [Focus Ireland] saw a spike in young LGBT+ people entering the homeless system and coming to our drop-in services. Although the nation gave young people the courage to come out, nimbyism presented itself at the level of the family unit: ‘yeah, it’s okay to be gay – just not here.’”

Therein lies one of two primary routes into LGBT+ youth homelessness: family and community rejection. “To come out as gay or trans to your parents or guardians and then to be asked to leave home is an experience completely unique to the LGBT+ population,” says Brien, noting also that LGBT+ young people within Ireland’s migrant communities are often up against higher levels of such rejection or strife.

Those leaving Ireland’s care system constitutes another main cohort at high risk. Kelly explains, “We see a lot of kids who leave State or residential care and go straight into homelessness. A study from 20 years ago said that two-thirds of kids who leave care will enter homelessness. We don’t have a contemporary study to see if that has reduced but my sense is that it probably remains consistent.”

For UCD’s Dr Aideen Quilty, who is interviewing young people affected by the issue, the study at hand represents a chance to transcend anecdote and move towards something more concrete and actionable.

Beyond the level of chaos associated with homelessness, which made even arranging interviews problematic for Quilty, her difficulty in recruiting people to participate in the research is emblematic of the level of shame and stigma associated with being young, LGBT+ and homeless.

She explains: “There’s this notion of the ‘double closet’. For some young people, coming out as gay in one instance would have rendered that person incredibly vulnerable in a particular context. In another context, coming out as homeless would render them equally vulnerable. The constancy of trying to juggle those two things led them to become invisible in both those spaces.”

Striking too, Quilty notes, is the narrowness of young people’s definitions of homelessness, even among those in the thick of it. This chimes with an insight from Brien, who says she has worked on cases in which individuals have couch-surfed for up to three years but who wouldn’t consider themselves homeless. Not only does this exclude them from the statistics on homelessness, leading to an incomplete read of the true scale of the problem, it also serves to minimise their experiences.

“People would say, ‘I’m sure you’ve interviewed people with much worse stories’. There’s this sense of other people being in much worse situations, and that theirs wasn’t real experience,” says Quilty. However, in listening to stories from people who have lived on sofas for weeks or months on end, and upon hearing of the devastating impact on them, there can be no doubt that theirs are ‘real’ experiences.

And they are experiences common to most sections of the community, with research participants encompassing those who identify as gay, bi, pansexual, non-binary, trans, agender and queer. Moreover, the problem extends countrywide, a point corroborated anecdotally by Brien and Kelly, who refer to their respective organisation’s national presence.

For Elaine Ryan, a Project Worker with Focus Ireland in Limerick, she hopes that the research will shine a light on the issue as it exists beyond Dublin. Based on her experience, Ryan agrees that the issue certainly exists regionally but that, “it may be less visible on account of there being far fewer LGBT+ outreach services, or social outlets, for young people to engage with.” Accordingly, she feels stronger networks are needed between homeless and LGBT+ organisations outside of Dublin.

Back in the capital, it’s unsurprising to learn from Quilty that many of those interviewed spoke about how they were being pushed out of the city. “By having to move out of their Dublin base, the people spoke to were also losing a whole support network.” In particular, Quilty notes that among the non-binary people who were interviewed, there was a strong Dublin focus to their sense of queer community. When they didn’t have ongoing access to that, they really felt it, creating a significant psychological impact.

Despite the psychological and emotional distress, mental unwellness, and chaos experienced by those Quilty has spoken with, she is eager to express “the extraordinary resilience, tenacity and strength” displayed by these same young people, and the creative ways in which they deal with their realities.

“As a researcher, found it difficult and challenging to get my head around homelessness as a complex set of systems and strictures, and you have these young people trying to navigate it in all sorts of different ways,” she says. “There’s nothing easy about that. [Their] stories are devastatingly honest, while also being some of the most inspirational accounts I’ve heard.”

For what it’s worth, optimism can be drawn from the fact that some young people who met with Quilty have managed to exit homelessness. And that community, camaraderie and chosen family have helped get them through it. She says: “young people spoke about the need to get on with it, but how it takes a huge toll. All those people were actively helping others: making rooms available, being in contact on social media, giving advice and being there as role models.”

The sense among all those spoken to is that this research represents the first important step in enhancing the depth of service provision for LGBT+ young people in Ireland. For Ryan in Limerick, “once the key needs, experiences and voices of LGBT+ youth homeless or homeless at risk voices are heard, services will be best placed to respond.” For Kelly, “Services do not necessarily need to change what they do, but rather how they do it.”

Within services, Quilty says, there are immediate areas where change can happen: “Simple things like language, pronouns, and visibility, and having key members of staff who understand particular issues and complexities, who have zero tolerance for homophobic and transphobic commentary or slurs. These aren’t difficult things.”

Given the way in which the current crisis has been allowed to escalate, hopes are relatively low that effective change can arrive quickly enough if the current government is to be relied upon. With this in mind, Kelly, Brien and Quilty all agree that a grassroots, communityled response is key, such as fundraising to support the introduction of LGBT+ safe houses, or encouraging more adults in the community to foster LGBT+ young people.

On this latter suggestion Kelly is blunt: “I’d love to see the community step up to the plate and offer a young person a bed. Pay queers to take queer kids in off the streets – it’s not rocket science. They won’t be left on their own, intensive wraparound support services can be provided as well. We need to take working models of fostering and tweak them for the community.”

Indeed, without the swift introduction of these initiatives, the prognosis is bleak. Brien paints a picture to be ashamed of, and until the publication of the research findings in the coming months, the last word goes to her: “LGBT+ young people are dropping out of work, college or school because of homelessness. Once that starts happening, it has a ripple effect. Their mental health degrades and they have to access organisations like Pieta House for suicide ideation counselling. Young LGBT+ lives will be lost.”