Meet Josiah

Out of 2 million youth who experience homelessness every year, 1 in 5 identifies as LGBTQ. As the numbers begin to surface, so do the faces. Meet Josiah.

Paint

Josiah was seeing red.  On the weekend of Valentine’s Day, 2009, the seventeen year-old returned to his home in Milwaukee, greeted by the silent stare of his grandma as he passed through the kitchen.  On his way to his bedroom, he stepped through his already open door and was met with the pungent smell of wet paint. He looked at his walls; the absence of what once was a self-painted mural above his bed dropped him to his knees.  The walls, once white, and his mural, an angel with torn wings, were now covered with thick, freshly smeared crimson.

“I knew automatically it was my mom,” he recalls, almost being able to see the memory reflected in his eyes.

Josiah also knew the implication. The red was meant to signify the blood of Christ and his mother’s desperate need to have his sins washed away—the dripping crown of thorns and lettering reading “STRAIGHT” and “FREEDOM FROM SIN” was a dead giveaway.  To him, the act of doing it represented two things: her intolerance of his lifestyle and the fact that he could no longer live at home.

“I realized that my life was gonna change drastically from then on,” he affirms, “I can’t even describe that feeling.”

Josiah had been “outed.” The fact that he was gay no longer was a veiled secret.  He was seven months shy of turning eighteen and would soon become part of the population researchers are trying so hard to quantify: homeless youth.

When placed next to the high number of young adults forced to leave their homes under the same premise, Josiah’s story does not seem that unique. Of the total homeless youth in Milwaukee, roughly 20-40% of them identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual or queer (LGBTQ), according to “The State of Youth Homelessness” report released by Milwaukee’s Cream City Foundation (CCF) in 2010.

Scott Davis, a researcher at the Center for Urban Initiatives in Milwaukee, co-conducted a pilot study for CCF that was included in the report.

“The number one reason LGBTQ [youth] gave for being homeless was due to running away or being thrown out,” Davis indicates while sitting next to his fellow researcher, Terry Batson, “Almost half of those youth said that. Three times of what non-LGBT youth say.”

What began as a study intended to garner how many homeless youth identify as LGBTQ resulted in Davis and Batson highlighting the difficulty in doing just that. They jointly point out the largest snag in collecting accurate data: most youth homeless shelters don’t ask about sexual orientation.  If no one asks, then no one knows. This leads them to believe that even in the data that exists, LGBTQ youth remain cautiously silent and seriously underrepresented.

With their PowerPoint presentation illuminating on a projector screen behind them, Davis explains that at this stage, he feels as though a count is secondary. More accurate counting methods need to be put in place before a reliable statistic can be determined—and by identifying the snag, as they did in this pilot study, they can begin to fill in the holes.

In reference to the numbers their study generated, however, Davis feels confident in the truth it begins to illustrate.

“The results mirror what you find in national studies that are more rigorous and generalizable,” he says, “It was reassuring that our results were coming up the same. Even the tiny chunk we looked at here in Milwaukee looks exactly like every other community.”

In Josiah’s compact community, secrets aren’t well kept—especially surrounding a topic as scandalous as being gay. In the small, private school he attended in suburban Milwaukee, Josiah revealed his sexuality to a friend on a Thursday.  By Friday he was making an appointment with the school superintendent to discuss his breach in school policy.

In this Christian-based school, homosexuality is not only revered as immoral, it is grounds for expulsion.  Josiah had predicted the fate of his remaining months as a high school junior, but grew anxious at how his sexuality would affect his mother’s job. She was employed through the school and, to Josiah’s understanding, was bound to the condition that each of her children must be enrolled.

“If all your kids don’t go to the school you can’t work there full time, you get fired,” he says, “I had to stand up for my mom.”

Josiah’s parents promptly withdrew him per the school’s request; his mother did not lose her job.

“He [the superintendent] had me withdrawal because they didn’t want it on the record for me to be expelled, so my parents withdrew me.”

Josiah, his parents and his three siblings moved back to Milwaukee nearly four years ago after having lived in both Ohio and Florida, where Josiah grew up. With the exception of his older brother who has a wife and three kids of his own, the family of five settled beneath his grandmother’s roof as a temporary living situation.  Between his family’s strict conservative values and the overhead pressure to stand morally upright, Josiah felt the mask he was wearing thicken, like layers of dried paint.

Truth

To Josiah, the truth of his sexuality was not a shock to his family. He recalls being enlisted in various Christian-based retreats and camps sporadically throughout his childhood—intended to deflect the homosexual suspicions his family furtively harbored.

“My parents said ever since I was a toddler they knew that I was gonna struggle with homosexuality,” admits Josiah readjusting on his stool—his long, dangling legs showing off his bleached skinny jeans. “So they sent me to lots and lots of retreats—I just couldn’t handle it any more. I knew how to act it out…I told my parents I was cured.”

The charade didn’t last long. In one phone call from the superintendent to Josiah’s mother, the curtains closed and the house lights undimmed.

After nearly a decade of self-censorship, the sexual orientation Josiah identifies with was unveiled.  And with an inkling of relief in his voice, he remembers, “When I was finally outed, my dad actually talked to me about it.”

The ultimatum that resulted from that talk was simple: either be straight or leave.  Josiah had to make an honest choice, so he left.
The options facing young adults in this situation are bleak, boiling down to generally three scenarios: street, shelter or couch. Even the most promising of the three, the shelter, does not hold much security—not to mention, a serious lack of space.

“The beds for homeless people are low anyway, they’re practically non-existent for youth,” Batson explains while assessing the minimal and unfavorable resources available to an ejected young adult, “You just think about that and homelessness could be in the hundreds, it just seems like they’re couch hopping.”

According to Cream City Foundation, the most recent number of emergency beds currently available to homeless youth in Milwaukee is sixteen.

Josiah clung to the open couch space that was made available to him. Temporary stints with friends he knew; longer stays with people he just met.

“I couch hopped for quite awhile actually,” stresses Josiah, recollecting the uneasy summer months of 2009, “I stayed for a weekend at this girl’s house who I met once before and her mom insisted that I stayed there. I would, like, clean the house and cook for them—whenever I stay anywhere I always feel like I’m in the way, so I make sure I do something to feel like I’m needed.”

What started as a weekend stay with a fifteen year-old and her mom turned into a crash pad for nearly the entire summer—and was an environment starkly opposing everything he was used to. The girl, who he refrained from naming, identified as a lesbian. He witnessed what it looked like to cohabitate with a mother’s acceptance and felt the foreign sense of encouragement to express one’s sexuality.

Independence

In the remaining months before Josiah turned eighteen, still eligible to stand beneath the umbrella of the foster care system, he enrolled in a temporary group home on Milwaukee’s eastside through Pathfinders—an organization dedicated to the needs of at-risk youth.

The two-week stay placed him in a room with two other males who, according to Josiah, were homophobic.  The disconnect he felt in the cramped living space was not solely due to his fashion sense. It was how far removed Josiah was from being a rule breaker or one to defy authority—the primary reason that many of the other group home members were there.

Reflecting back on it, Josiah chuckles that he was “just in there for being gay.”

“It comes as either a surprise or sometimes a shock that young people are still really struggling with not being accepted by their own family,” explains Tim Baack, the Executive Vice President of Pathfinders, “Which is why in most cases they’re at high-risk of being homeless and being on the streets and having to fend for themselves at a time where they are not prepared to do that.”

Baack’s eyes widen at the end of each sentence while sitting in the comfortable clutter of his office.  Located at 1614 East Kane Pl., Pathfinders is a vital component of a larger collaboration of Milwaukee organizations geared towards assisting LGBTQ youth. This partnership recognizes that once the umbrella of being a minor is removed, the youth—who are legally no longer “youth” once they turn eighteen, are stripped from the little resources they had to begin with.

Julie Bock, the Director of Programs for the collaborative organization, Project Q, elaborates on this amplified vulnerability that homeless young people face the moment they are no longer on the foster care system’s radar.

“When someone turns eighteen they are in the adult system—that’s a really big problem,” she says, “I’ll be really frank; I don’t think there is a safe space in Milwaukee right now. Certainly not any of the standing short-term shelters.”

As a direct response to this problem, Pathfinders, along with the alliance of fellow non-profit LGBTQ youth-oriented organizations, developed the highly innovative and valuable resource for young adults aged 18 to 25: the Q-Blok Program.

“We came together to try to figure out what was the best way to meet the housing and supportive needs of our LGBT young people here in the Milwaukee community,” Baack explains—highlighting the unique and numerous ways Q-Blok serves its at-risk members.

“We find them appropriate apartments so they can live independently in the community,” Baack continues, outlining their long-range goals for members, “We really give them an opportunity to deal with whatever their educational needs may be, their employment need, to help them move towards self-sufficiency and independence.”

The foundation Q-Blok creates for program participants include: assistance in finding a safe apartment, the security deposit, full rent for the first few months, utilities, a grocery allowance and a phone, if needed.

Josiah’s two-week stay at the group home fostered the anti-gay sentiment he grew to expect. What he didn’t expect to find, however, was his ticket forward. He heard of this new “Q-Blok Program” on the cusp of launching through Pathfinders and assessed himself to be a perfect candidate.

He initiated contact with Q-Blok’s housing specialist, Craig Leren, and became the first name scribbled on the programs waiting list.  Due to its introductory stages and ongoing funding limitations, the number of available participants remains capped at just twenty-five—a number that quickly reached capacity shortly after its official launch at the beginning of November 2009.

Josiah eagerly waited for his birthday in September with the promise of being admitted into the Program once he turned eighteen.

Just over two months later, he was looking out the window of his first apartment. Day-old Chinese containers and Starbucks cups littered the coffee table behind him, artfully arranged next to his lit stick of incense and half-empty pack of cigarettes.

Josiah embraces his newfound independence—a chance to start new.  As a self-professed “bubble boy” for the majority of his upbringing, he is eagerly jumping at the chance to be his own person.

A primary objective for the Q-Blok program is to harvest independence. A test of the program members’ dedication is the requirement of them to either enroll in school or proactively seek a job, with proof of at least ten applications per week.

During the winter months, Josiah held a temporary position at the Census Bureau in Milwaukee. He is currently looking for work while pursuing his high school diploma at Outlook University Independent School Network located in the heart of downtown Milwaukee.

“My high school experience has definitely changed dramatically,” Josiah muses, “I went from being the only gay kid to being the only white kid.”

At the close of Outlook’s 2010 Spring Semester, Josiah feels as though he is delivering the high academic performance is capable of prior to his life being drastically rearranged. His ambition is as contagious as his laugh. As his case worker, Scott Thompson, highlights:

“The problem with Josiah is that he has too many options open to him–now he just has to pick something.”

Josiah says that looking at a blank canvas or a white wall makes him think of a fresh start.  Maybe there’s a reason why he hasn’t painted yet.