Luke Judge

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Five recent suicides by harassed gay youth brought about 140 people — infants to aged, straight, gay, out and coming out — to a rally at the Pike County Court House on Saturday to support the rights and safety of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) community.

To a crowd carrying posters of the dead, author Amy Ferris introduced speakers that included Patty Tomaszewski, who is working to start a Pike County LGBT center. She noted that a third of suicides come from the LGBT community, and gay teens are twice as likely to attempt suicide.

Cindy Stine, educational outreach coordinator at Safe Haven, spoke for Delaware Valley School District Superintendent Candis Finan in support of laws proposed by New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey to protect the safety of LGBT students.

Kyle Kaplan recalled being called an “effing lesbian” in high school. And Michael Mele compared himself, as a young gay man considering culinary school, to Raymond Chase who, as a culinary school student, was found hanging in his room.

Chase’s great aunt, Sharron Blanding, carried a poster of her nephew at the rally. She had come from Charlotte, N.C., to attend his funeral, which was Friday. She said she had been up all night on a computer vigil, removing gay slurs from the Internet tribute page for Chase. She did it to keep his parents from seeing them. But she was also copying the insults to another page she would show to authorities.

“I need to know if that was what was happening to my nephew,” she said. “The day of his death he had stayed up with friends all night, and called his mother in the morning as usual. He was laughing and joking. He showed no indication he needed to do that.”

If he had been troubled by harassment, he had not let anyone know.

Marching down Broad Street at the rally, Port Jervis High School senior Travis Benson recalled that in eighth grade at Port Jervis Middle School, he had only three friends. That was the year he “came out,” he said, essentially by not contradicting those who called him gay.

“They’d taunt me, and I wouldn’t deny it,” Benson said.

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While the Obama administration unveiled its new plan to address the issue of homelessness at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Tue., June 22, Ida Mabel Hedger, was perched on the edge of her wheelchair four blocks away at the Farragut North Metro Station in Northwest, shaking a change cup.

Rosie, as she is known to her friends, said that she has been living on the streets of our nation’s capital for the past 14 years, eating out of garbage cans and fending for herself. Hedger, like far too many homeless men, women, and children across the United States, knows the reality of skid row.

“I’m going to die on the street—I got about six months left,” said Hedger, 78, a disabled widow from Winchester, Ky., who said that she became homeless after her husband died 15 years ago.

Hedger’s desperation ran concurrent with a press conference, chock full of congressmen, cabinet members, and media, to announce Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, which according to the 2010 report, is “a roadmap for joint action by the 19-member United States Interagency Council on Homelessness along with local and state partners in the public and private sectors.”

“It is estimated that nearly 2 million men, women, and children, experienced homelessness at some point during the last year,” said Barbara Poppe, the executive director of the U.S Interagency Council on Homelessness and one of six experts on the panel.

U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan outlined the Opening Doors plan, during the press conference, which attempts to allocate resources and align programs to achieve four main goals.

“We will finish the job of ending chronic homelessness in five years; Prevent and end homelessness among veterans in five years; Prevent and end homelessness for families, youth, and children in 10 years; and set a path to ending all types of homelessness,” he said.

Although Opening Doors may sound good on paper– Hedger is skeptical of both the Obama administration and the plan.

“I want people to know what Mr. Obama is doing—He’s not helping us,” Hedger said.

“All he does is party, party, party… going overseas spending our money for trips, [while] nothing is being done about homelessness. He’s a talker…Everyday something is going on [in reference to President Obama’s glamorous lifestyle] – fancy food, fancy drink. What do we have—nothing? We eat out of a can,” she said.

Hedger’s claims about President Obama may be unjustified, but it does not take away from the fact that the District’s homeless do not have faith in the current system.

Carl Turner, 58, a vendor of Street Sense, a District-based newspaper that helps the homeless earn income by letting them keep the proceeds of the newspapers they sell, said it is safer living on the street than it is living in homeless shelters.

“Shelters are rough. You have people who steal, people who use drugs, violent people, mentally ill people – at least on the street you can find yourself a safe quiet place and feel safe,” Turner said. Originally from New York, Turner said he came to the District to care for his elderly mother and has subsequently become homeless. “They don’t have the proper security in the shelters,” he said.

Frustration is an inevitable outcome of life on the street, but the District is home to several homeless service providers that insist they are doing the best they can to address this growing epidemic.

David H. Inoue, MPH, MHA, and the administrative director of the Christ House, a 24-hour nursing facility in Northwest, said, he and the Christ House staff are working hard to give proper health care to homeless people with acute health problems, but said they depend on the federal government for assistance.

Inoue said the Opening Doors plan sounds ambitious, but not impossible.

“I think with the limited resources that are allocated to this problem [the federal government is] doing as much as they can. The biggest problem is that homelessness is not something we, as a nation, have prioritized. There is not the political will to support services.”
The District of Columbia Department of Human Services also noted a significant increase in the amount of assistance they are receiving from the federal government.

“We are seeing more involvement than ever before from the federal government in addressing homelessness in the District. Opening Doors is an example of that,” said Cheryl Holliday the acting Department of Human Service public information officer.

“Moreover, the federal leadership has also come with crucial financial support for the District. The District received a federal appropriation last year of $17.2 million to support and expand our permanent supportive housing initiative.”

Several homeless agencies have said that housing subsidies are crucial to ending homelessness in the District, especially because family homelessness is on the rise.

“Homelessness has increased for families over the past year,” said Michele Salters, 40, chief of programs at The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the District’s largest non-profit homeless resource agency located in Southeast.

“Probably the most significant thing that could happen [to end homelessness], which I was happy to see in the [Opening Doors] plan was the increase for the potential availability of housing subsidies. We certainly have a serious issue of poverty in the District. Without ongoing housing subsidies many individuals and families are not able to maintain housing on their own and— of course— our housing market is not affordable for people with low incomes.”

A 2010 report issued by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, indicates that 6,539 people in the District were considered homeless in 2010—a 13.6 percent increase from 2007. Of the 2,593 single homeless clients who received assistance in shelters, throughout the District in 2010, men accounted for 76 percent, women accounted for 23.9 percent, and transgendered accounted for .1 percent.

Within that same population 29.7 percent suffer from chronic health problems, 25.5 percent are chronic substance abusers, 2.7 percent are living with HIV/AIDS, 23.5 percent are physically disabled, and 21.4 percent are severely mentally ill.

Opening Doors reports there are more than 640,000 men, women, and children who are without housing on any single night in our country. Annually, that figure, more than doubles, with 1,558,917 people who experience homelessness at some point during any given year.

President Obama released a statement praising the new homelessness initiative produced by his Cabinet.

“Now more than ever, we have the responsibility to tackle the national challenges like homelessness in the most cost-effective ways possible. Instead of simply responding once a family or a person becomes homeless, prevention and innovation must be at the forefront of our efforts. I was excited to receive Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness,” Obama said.

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I couldn’t call in gay the day after Pride because of damn publishing deadlines. So I’m writing this on a very few hours of sleep and sore feet (from walking in the parade as “Super Slut”). Yes, it was rather tragic. But I was a real superhero when our 28-foot superhero “float” started to fall off Michael’s Jeep, and a large sycamore tore its arm off. I had to hold up the wounded superhero using only my bulging biceps for about eight blocks traveling at about eight miles per hour. It burned, I wept, then I drank a lot. Seriously, never a dull Pride!

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