Homeless for the Holidays: Ending a Nation's Cruel Indifference to Homeless Youth Carl Siciliano - The Huffington Post
go to original December 21, 2013

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At the first Christmas the infant Jesus was homeless. There was no room for him at the inn. And this Christmas hundreds of thousands of teens across our country are homeless. There is no room for them at the shelters. Today I ask you to think of the many frightened teens sleeping under bridges, on buses and subways, and in abandoned buildings in cities and towns across our nation.

At the Ali Forney Center, the nation's largest organization dedicated to housing and supporting homeless LGBT youth, we are witness to a national tragedy and a national disgrace. Scores of LGBT teens who have been driven from their homes by rejecting parents flock to us from across the country. When they become homeless, the overwhelming majority cannot find a shelter bed.

Last year over 500,000 unaccompanied youth experienced homelessness ("unaccompanied" means that they were on their own, without a parent or guardian), and some 40 percent of them were LGBT. Of those 500,000 youth out in the streets, fewer than 50,000 were able to find a shelter bed. In this, the wealthiest nation on Earth, hundreds of thousands of teens are stranded in the streets, alone and terrified, forced to make it on their own. All over our country there are vastly more homeless kids than there are beds where they might find shelter.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post

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