Zach Bartush, left, Keri Stitt, right

A demonstration grant is expiring and funding is needed to keep the LGBT youth home open

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Promise House launched its Pride Campaign on June 1 to keep its new LGBT Group Home open. The current demonstration grant that allowed it to open expires on Aug. 31.

“The program’s been full since the day it opened,” said Charitable Partnerships Manager Zach Bartush. “There’s a waiting list and huge demand.”

The LGBT Group Home falls under Promise House’s Transitional Living Program and offers youth in the program a wide variety of services including shelter, food, clothing, medical and dental care, counseling, education assistance, life skills training and more. Participants in the program can live in transitional housing up to two years. The program is for LGBT youth ages 18-21.

When young adults who’ve been in transitional living are ready to go out on their own, Promise House helps them rent apartments they can afford, and youth may continue accessing programs including counseling and case management after leaving Promise House.

Bartush said rather than even thinking about closing the program, it needs to expand. He said in the annual homeless count taken this winter, they met almost 200 homeless kids. Of that number, 25 percent identified as LGBT.

Chief Partner Relations Officer Keri Stitt help coordinate the homeless count. She said it took place last winter over six nights. What was surprising, she said, was not just how many LGBT youth experienced homelessness, but how their experiences with homelessness were more severe.

Almost half of those surveyed had gone though homeless periods in their lives four or more times, significantly more than the youth population in general.

More than half had experienced sexual assault in their lives and 43 percent had been physically or sexually assaulted since becoming homeless.

They felt unsafe at local shelters at a higher rate than non-LGBT youth.

LGBT youth reported a higher rate of being victimized while homeless.

“Our survey didn’t capture all the homeless youth,” Stitt said. “Many couch-surf so they’re not on the street.”

But this year’s survey did reach more youth than in the two previous years when they tried to count homeless young people. The first year, volunteers set up outside the Erik Jonsson Library overnight and surveyed 45 youth. The next year they located in a park and only found a few young people.

This year, the survey lasted six nights, with 200 volunteers spreading out across the county. The largest number of homeless youth were still found downtown at the library, city hall and up and down Main Street. Other teams surveyed homeless youth in Deep Ellum, Oak Lawn, along Royal Lane, in Mesquite and in South Dallas.

Stitt said they didn’t have too much resistance from the young people. “We were able to train volunteers how to approach youth,” she said.

They also handed out gift cards and DART passes to those that filled out the surveys. Some who resisted the first or second night, participated later in the week.

“Each time we saw them, we built rapport,” Stitt said.

When volunteers asked youth what they needed most, a state I.D. was the No. 1 response. They referred them to The Stewpot, the downtown day shelter run by First Presbyterian Church of Dallas that offers a number of programs, including documentation assistance, and that provides meals for the homeless.

Stitt said they also asked the young men and women what they would like to see happen that might help them or others. Affordable housing, more youth shelters for teens, raising the minimum wage and more childcare at the workplace were common answers.

But one common response surprised Stitt: “They would like adults to be held accountable for abuse,” she said. “And there should be penalties for not taking care of your children.”

Although a number of youth had gotten in trouble with the law, most of their wrongdoings were crimes of survival.

Those who had aged out of the foster care system said they weren’t prepared to live independently. Almost half of those who were in the foster system were forced out of the homes they were living in. Another 12 percent ran away from their foster homes.

For all these reasons, Stitt said, Promise House would like to open at least one more LGBT home this year. But Bartush is worried about just keeping open the one they already have.

The Pride Campaign runs through June with a goal of raising $25,000. All gifts up to $2,500 will be matched, thanks to an anonymous donor.

With other grants that are in the works and proceeds from Black Tie Dinner, the LGBT Group Home should be able to continue to operate for another year if the Pride Campaign this month is successful.