Trading sex to survive, sleeping in cemeteries: CT’s LGBTQ homeless youth find exploitation instead of support, experts say

Sincere woke up in a Providence hospital bed, covered in wires.

The then-18-year-old had become homeless after running away from his Connecticut Department of Children and Families group home to Rhode Island knowing his “friend” had an open bed. One night at the house, Sincere, who is gay and withheld his last name for privacy, began to feel “weird.”

“Something went in my body that I know I don’t want in my body,” Sincere said. “I ran across the street to the fire station. Right away, I wasn’t able to talk. They realized something was wrong with me because I started crying. They called the cops from West Warwick. They responded, and I guess they said [at] that home, even though they were my friends, multiple times [someone tried] to put things in their so-called friends’ drinks.”

“I went into a state where my eyes went to the back of my head and they called an ambulance,” Sincere said. “When I ended up in the hospital, that’s when I went blank. They had to wake me up using Narcan.”

At 20 years old, Sincere has been homeless twice, attempted suicide 20 times, and been hospitalized on numerous occasions.

Now housed, Sincere says he feels more happy, confident and safe today than he’s ever been, but a disproportionate number of LGBTQ youth continue to endure the precarity of homelessness that Sincere calls “an experience that I wouldn’t ever want to go back to.”

In Connecticut, reporting barriers have made LGBTQ youth homelessness a largely undocumented facet of the state’s housing crisis, placing unknown numbers of children and young adults at risk of sexual exploitation, trafficking, violence, substance use, mental health conditions, and more.

As a result, the scope of the problem remains hidden from all but the people who experience it and the LGBTQ advocates who try to help.

“The queer folks are your canaries in the coal mine in this homelessness issue,” racial justice and LGBTQ activist Kamora Herrington said.

Survival sex and trafficking

The founder of Kamora’s Cultural Corner, Herrington has carved an enclave of love and culture in Hartford’s North End and has come to be known as “mom” to the LGBTQ youth who have been lost and rejected by society.

Herrington has watched her children do everything to survive, from sleeping in cemetery mausoleums to trading food stamps for a spot on a couch to bartering their bodies for a motel bed.

The latter of which Herrington referred to as the place where “souls die.”

The practice, known as “survival sex,” involves trading sexual acts for food, shelter or other immediate needs. Studies have estimated that 28% of homeless youth and runaways engage in survival sex. Others have put the number as high as 50%, with LGBTQ youth seven times more likely than heterosexual peers to exchange sex for a place to stay.

Mel Cordner, the founder and executive director of the LGBTQ youth empowerment organization Q Plus, said this form of exploitation and coercion is pervasive in Connecticut.

“I’ve met people who are like, ‘Oh, you’re talking about New York City.’ No friend, I’m talking about New Haven and Hartford and Waterbury, but I’m literally also talking about Farmington and Avon,” Cordner said. “This happens everywhere.”

“It’s really gross to say, but it is very easy to traffic queer teenagers,” Cordner said. “All someone with that type of intent has to do is be nice to them because they’re not used to adults being nice to them. They’re not used to being seen, they’re not used to being respected or believed. A person just has to be patient and kind to a kid a few times, and that’s all it’s going to take (to say) ‘Do this one favor for me and I’ll get you a hotel room for the night,’ or ‘Do this one favor for my friend and I’ll get you a hotel room for a week.’ ”

Cordner said the practice often develops through survival-based networks built by LGBTQ youth. Friends will take turns securing a motel room from their groomers, packing seven or eight kids into a single suite so everyone can take advantage of the warm room and shower.

“If you’re a queer, homeless kid and you start talking to other queer homeless kids, often you’ll be encouraged into sex work because that’s the only way they know how to provide for each other,” Cordner said. “People get so mad about it. They’ll say, ‘Well how could they do that to each other?’ Because that’s the only way they’re going to survive. They’re not doing anything to each other, they’re keeping each other alive the only way they know how.”

Shelters unsafe

Among the reasons why these youth turn to each other is a fear of anti-LGBTQ sentiment at shelters and food pantries. Cordner said that hostile or even deadly experiences at faith-based nonprofits across the country loom large in the queer collective memory. As a result, many pass on the services they desperately need due to fear of rejection or worse.

“Every kid I’ve ever met who is living in their car or living on their best friend’s couch or whatever they’re doing, knows other stories and have heard stories about being rejected in these types of places, even in Connecticut,” Cordner said.

In shelters that are accepting, legal protocols can still create an alienating experience for LGBTQ people, particularly transgender and nonbinary individuals. Cordner said that shelters are required to gender people according to the sex assigned at birth and record occupants using their legal name, not their chosen name.

Who occupies the space also creates anxieties, especially for transitioning youth who don’t know whether a bunkmate might verbally or physically accost them, or if anyone will do anything to stop it.

Cordner said that runaway children under age 18 end up avoiding shelters entirely to avoid being sent back to toxic households.

Chair of the Hartford LGBTQ Commission, Curtis Rodriguez-Porter said during the COVID-19 pandemic the commission began examining shelter policies and holding trainings to make the city’s homeless shelters safe for LGBTQ residents.

“Because of COVID, youth had to be in the house. They were scared just to have that all-day interaction with their families,” Porter said. “We had youth that started running away. We had youth who were kicked out of their homes during COVID because of their LGBTQIA status. That’s when we really started looking at what is going on here? What is in place for our youth? What organizations are open and affirming to and accepting them in the event that this happened?”

Despite the gains the commission has already made towards eliminating LGBTQ discrimination in shelters, Porter said it’s evident that Hartford needs more work.

Within the last month, Porter reported a situation where a shelter said there was a bed available for a youth in crisis, but when the queer youth arrived, there was suddenly no room and they were referred somewhere else.

“Nobody’s going to say they were turned away because they were a queer youth. However, if I called and was given confirmation that there was space, why were they turned away?” Porter said. “It just leaves questions.”

Porter said that when people pick and choose who they serve, the consequences can be life threatening for LGBTQ youth.

“It’s so important that the first point of contact is supportive and affirming because we don’t know if that could be the last point of contact,” Porter said.

Both Porter and Cordner have been part of a larger conversation about bringing a first-of-its kind LGBTQ shelter to Hartford, but securing funding for such an endeavor has been a challenge.

“The conversation is obviously the first step — we all agree it’s a problem. But we don’t need a conversation, we need a building,” Cordner said. “I know enough people interested that if I had a million dollars and I could buy a building and pay them, we’d be done here. We need the money to get this off the ground.”

Porter and Cordner said that an LGBTQ shelter would provide a level of security and care that traditional shelters can not.

“A lot of queer kids don’t feel safe in those places no matter how many times people tell them it’s safe, or how many trainings (staff) have done, or how many (rainbow) stickers they’ve put on their door,” Cordner said. “It is not the same thing as walking into a shelter that is queer specific, talking to a visibly queer person at the door, and that visibly queer person says ‘I’ve been where you are, and I got to where I am now, and I can help you get to where you want to be.’

“If we were able to have a space and a staff and a resource that was by queer folks for queer folks where no one ever had to walk through the door wondering if they’re about to get dead named or misgendered or sent back, it makes a world of difference, even if technically, on paper, the resources are very similar.”

A lack of data

One of the barriers to funding support programs is the lack of available data demonstrating the size and need of the homeless LGBTQ community.

“In Connecticut, you’re not allowed to ask that question at the point of entry at a shelter,” Porter said. “Entities drive policies based off data. And when you don’t have that data, it kind of hinders you from going to plead your case. (What we have) is anecdotal and they’re looking for tangible numbers. Because (the LGBTQ) community is a protected class … we’re just caught in that space in between.”

In Connecticut today, there are 218 youth on the state’s By Name List of people entering and exiting the Homeless Management Information System. How many identify as a member of the LGBTQ community cannot be known.

While research has suggested that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented within the homeless community, barriers to data collection have forced analysts to capture population estimates largely through self-report surveys.

In 2022, the Trevor Project, a nonprofit with a mission of ending suicide in the LGBTQ community, found that 28% of LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 25 reported experiencing homelessness or housing instability at least once during their lifetime. Rates among the transgender community were even higher, with nearly 40% reporting that they were either currently or previously homeless or housing insecure.

Among Herrington’s LGBTQ children in Hartford, 12 are homeless.

Trauma on the streets and at home

While experiencing homelessness, LGBTQ youth are more susceptible to addiction, domestic abuse, street violence, and theft. Herrington said much of the crime perpetrated on the community goes unreported and unpunished due to poor relationships or perceptions of law enforcement.

Mental health is another concern. The Trevor Project also found that homeless LGBTQ youth are two to four times more likely to report anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts than their stably housed LGBTQ peers. Already, LGBTQ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual and cisgender youth.

In order to survive, Herrington said some hide their LGBTQ identities.

“There is a trans woman who is living like a homeless man right now because it’s easier,” Herrington said. “Her life sucks. There are no resources. Adding being a trans woman on top of it is one more extra piece that she might not be able to handle, so she’s pretending to be a man.”

The reasons why LGBTQ youth become homeless can be as nuanced and varied as anyone else’s, but in a percentage of cases, LGBTQ children are launched into homelessness by families who reject them.

According to The Trevor project, 8.8% of all LGBTQ youth “ran away from home because of mistreatment or fear of mistreatment due to their LGBTQ identity.” Another 5.6% reported that “they were kicked out or abandoned due to their LGBTQ identity.”

In Herrington’s experience, failures in Connecticut’s foster care system cleared the path to homelessness for her children.

“Most of the people who I’m talking about, there isn’t a place for family triage to happen,” Herrington said. “One of the very real unique issues, which has not changed at all, is that the transition from being a youth in care to being an adult who the community doesn’t care about involves steps into homelessness … with no support network whatsoever.”

Sincere entered foster care as a baby in 2003.

In the system, he was passed to families and group homes that were sometimes kind, and at other times abusive.

In middle school, a series of fights landed Sincere in Hartford’s Juvenile Detention Center for two months. High school was rough, too.

By the time Sincere was 18, he decided to run away from his toxic group home, starting a two-year stint of escapes and returns.

He eventually found support and a reason to live in his mom and his boyfriend. He finished high school and is working to secure a better future while in transitional housing program for youth aging out of foster care.

But Sincere also said supportive LGBTQ services like dedicated housing and therapy are needed.

“Just telling them to call 211 and you’ll find a home — that’s not right,” he said.

Today, Sincere is working to get a job at a local hospital. He’s also considering becoming a police officer for the city of Hartford. But at the end of the day, he knows he wants to be in the community helping others like him.

“I have gone through rough a path on my own,” Sincere said. “(I want a career) helping young adults, or even young kids, who are possibly at risk of going through what I’ve gone through by guiding them the right way and steering them in the right direction. I always am the type to want to help somebody,  and that’s one thing I do want to pursue in the future, to be able to get these young kids to realize they’re not alone, and I realize that yes, no one’s perfect, but there’s always room for change in their life.”