Help the Campaign for Youth Shelter

[anatta]

There is a new campaign in the USA to make more shelters available for homeless youth. As many of these youth are homeless because they're LGBT, LGBT organisations and activists are encouraged to get involved as well. I'm not a US citizen but I would imagine that by signing petitions, contacting local LGBT groups etc., anyone in the US could make a difference.

Article

I have been joined by other homeless youth service providers, and LGBT advocates, many of whom worked long on hard on achieving marriage equality, to launch the Campaign for Youth Shelter. Our goal is a very simple one: to implement a plan to provide safe shelter for every homeless youth currently suffering on the streets without a roof over their heads. We are calling on the New York City and New York State to combine in providing $3 million in additional funding each year to create 100 new youth shelter beds, until such time as there are no longer waiting lists at the youth shelters. And with the state having projected that gay marriage will bring $391 million in the next three years in additional tax revenues and economic activity, $3 million for our community's homeless kids is a modest request.

The article is just a little unfair to LGBT adults I think, because most people are simply unaware of the problem. Even this article he writes does not actually shed much light on the details, as you can see by the many surprised questions asked by commenters.

He still doesn't explain, for example, whether people under a certain age are actually FORBIDDEN from using adult shelters or whether they simply don't seem like safe places to the ones who are instead waiting for spaces to become available at youth ones; whether the CPS has a legal requirement to care for them after a certain age or whether they don't come forward because they're scared of being forced into foster care or back home; at what age parents are legally allowed to stop providing care for their children... he leaves many unanswered questions about the actual nature of the problem.

[anatta]

Admittedly I should have given this thread a more grabbing title, but is there any particular reason people are reading and not responding? As I said, I don't believe the author is right that many in the LGBT community just don't care about this problem or find it inconvenient, because when people do talk about it it's with shock and disbelief that it happens, and many people here are of an age at which it could easily be them, but clearly there is something that is holding people back from talking about it and getting involved, not just here but in general. Is it lack of knowledge about the issue or about the ways in which politicians are making it worse through funding cuts and policies? Is it that it's too depressing?