Teens on TC streets

BY LYDIA HOWELL

The stories told by today’s runaway and homeless teens all sound familiar to me. They tell of fleeing abusive, and, in many cases, addicted parents; being shoved out of their homes by poverty or homophobia; feeling that they are simply not wanted.

One of my earliest memories is hiding in a closet with my little brother, hearing the curses and blows my grandfather hurled at my grandmother. It wasn’t any different between my stepfather and mother—except that their anger could easily transfer to my

younger brother or me. I grew up hiding, and at 13 began running away.
A neighbor’s garage seemed a lot safer after an evening held hostage by one of my grandfather’s drunken rages. More terrifying than usual, he paced back and forth with his hunting rifle, threatening to kill my grandmother and me. Calling the police never resulted in anything, except seeing the contempt with which they eyed my grandmother. The one time I’d hidden the rifle in a drainpipe a few blocks away, my grandfather reported it stolen and the police immediately suspected me. Taking me aside, they’d quickly persuaded me to show them where it was because “what if a little kid finds it and gets hurt?” I’d begged them to keep the rifle and say we couldn’t find it, but they’d brought it back. I stayed in a corner of that garage until dawn, and then, slipped into the back door of my grandparents’ house, with the old feeling of guilty house, with the old feeling of guilty dread at what I might find.

After her stormy marriage, my mother dropped out of her old 1950s’ Donna Reed dreams and into the swinging 1970s. Moving from a Dallas suburb to an inner city apartment near Lee Park—where hippies hung out—she added drugs to her already-daily alcohol intake. A line of men streamed through, most of them expecting to have sex with both the still young and attractive divorcee and her teenage daughter. After my mother passed out, they’d corner me in the little dressing room where I slept. More and more often, I took my old Girl Scout sleeping bag and curled up inside thickets in the park. When I ran away, I sold underground newspapers on the streets, ate free meals with the Hari Krishna or a “Jesus freaks” commune and tried to elude police. Picked up as a runaway and returned home, I was always told to “obey your mother”—who regularly told me to stay away from our studio apartment so she could be alone with this week’s boyfriend.
I was “befriended” by a 25-year-old man—who said he was 18. Ending up with him in a rural trailer in another county, I realized his intentions were anything but protective. It would only be a matter of time before I’d be forced to have sex with him. I escaped and was picked up by the state patrol while walking down the highway.
My “choices” were to be abused by people I knew or to be abused by strangers. At 14, I concluded there was at least a fighting chance with people I knew.
What remains most vivid about being a runaway is the furtiveness, the fear of trying to find a safe place to be after dark and the utter sense of being alone in the world. That was in the 1970s, at the tail end of flower-children days. Now, the streets are far meaner and youth are more quickly seen as criminals than as victims.

Kids are vulnerable
“The community creates an ‘age of innocence’ that keeps getting lower and lower. We USED to say that youth under 18 should be protected. Now we FEAR teenagers and see even 14- or 12-year-olds as not vulnerable, [but] as predators,” says Monica Nilsson, longtime advocate for the homeless at Simpson Housing, now community development director at The Bridge for Homeless and Runaway Youth.

The Bridge began in a West Bank house in 1970 as a shelter for runaway girls, started by Sister Rita Steinhagen, a beloved TC peace activist who died Nov. 21. Now The Bridge is in Uptown and has expanded into two old houses next door to each other, sheltering 12 to 15 boys and girls in their teens to early 20s. With a threadbare, but welcoming warmth, The Bridge reminds me a bit of the Children of God commune that fed me at 13. With staff offices tucked into odd corners, the quarters have been converted into common rooms with TV, couches, a ping-pong table. Girls sleep on one floor, boys on another. A handful of emergency beds—mats on the floor—are in demand nightly.

“This year we had to do something we’ve NEVER done in 35 years,” says Nilsson. “We needed a lottery at 10 p.m., for emergency, one-night beds. Those whose number isn’t chosen, we give them a bus token,” Nilsson says. When I ask her where those youth go, she shudders in angry frustration. “Out, out.”
They ride the bus or the light rail all night. Some are arrested for being on the streets past curfew. There are always adult men driving the streets, looking for sex with teenage girls or boys. If they’re cold and hungry enough, some of the youth who lose the emergency shelter lottery will get into those cars.
In 2003, 4,751 Minnesota children, youth and young adults (aged 18-21) were called homeless. (Source: a 2003 Wilder Foundation study of homelessness—done every three years). All such numbers are lower than actual numbers, since many homeless people of all ages are never counted.
There are 48 available beds for homeless youth in the metro area and none in suburban or outstate Minnesota. In contrast, (not counting juveniles incarcerated as adults), Red Wing and Thistledew criminal juvenile detention facilities have more than 200 beds.

Who are these throw-away kids? About 85 percent of the documented homeless youth are of color. Given disproportionately higher poverty rates, Nilsson says these youth have fewer options than white youth, who might stay with friends who have extra room. With marginal resources, kids as young as 16 are expected to fend for themselves in a downsized economy with “welfare reform.” Nilsson gives the example of Native American youth coming to the Twin Cities from reservations up north, where one youth shared a 700-square-foot house with 19 family members.

“People come from outstate Minnesota. People in poverty are looking to build a better life—just like we do,” Nilsson says. “Hennepin County purchases 1,100 to 1,400 one-way bus tickets OUT of here every year.”

Chris, a 19-year-old African-American from Jackson, Miss., came to Minneapolis expecting to go to college while working a better job than he could have found back home. Living with a brother who eventually lost his housing, there was no room for Chris when he later moved in with his fiancée’s relatives. Chris, a warm and resolute young man, ended up at The Bridge.

“People disregard hiring young people to hire an older person. They think the older person has bills to pay, but a 17-year-old may need that job just as much!” he says earnestly. “Plus, some say you have to have a car or they won’t hire you. A lot of young people HAVE to rely on the bus. Jobs and job skills are one of the biggest things that homeless youth need.”

I got my first job at 15, working in restaurants, later as a nursing assistant in a nursing home, employed all through high school. Getting full-time hours, eventually saving enough money to answer a college student’s ad for a roommate, I left home at 17. Chris pinpoints one of the biggest changes since I was a teenager in the 1970s. The entry-level jobs youth could count on getting then—restaurants, retail, even newspaper routes—are now increasingly held by laid-off or working-poor adults, who often juggle two or three such jobs to stay afloat. In fact, these are the same jobs that some homeless adults hold.
About half of homeless youth are running away from battering or sexual abuse at home. At 14, I’d called Child Protection, asking to be put in foster care to escape sexual abuse. I was told, “We don’t have enough staff to protect little kids from real danger. You’re big enough to take care of yourself. We suggest you stay away from home as much as possible.” Now, over 30 years later, that hasn’t changed, and despite all the “family values” rhetoric, things may even be worse.
“The federal government CUT Child Protection by $21 million in Hennepin County,” Nilsson says. “They’re only serving children age 8 or younger—age EIGHT. There’s an adage in child protection: ‘If you’re old enough to run, you can protect yourself.’ We act like young people are making ‘choices’ when they have no choices. ‘Survival sex’ may be the only option in a Minnesota winter,” Nilsson says.

For most of the 1990s, I lived in an apartment building behind Hard Times, an open-almost-24-hours West Bank cafe known as a hangout for homeless youth. Knowing thstreet life, I regularly offered teenage girls overnight shelter and breakfast. I could relate to their stories of abusive alcoholic/drug-addicted parents, sexual abuse by relatives or their mothers’ boyfriends, and streets where they were again likely to experience what they’d desperately tried to escape.

“Melissa” (all names are changed) was a white, 15-year-old from a middle-class Minnetonka family, with a purple streak in her hair. After telling her mother that her stepfather was sexually abusing her, she was thrown out of the house. For a few weeks, she stayed with different friends from school but was soon expected to return home. She used a fake ID to say she was 18 and got a part-time job at a thrift store, couch-surfed in the punk scene when possible. She confided that she’d already had sex with a few older men to get off the streets once winter hit. She wasn’t in school and talked vaguely about “getting the GED someday.” That winter, I regularly saw Melissa hanging out with other youth at Hard Times.
“Michelle” was a stunned and shy African-American 16-year-old, sick of dealing with a crack addicted mother and her boyfriend. She’d tried to stay in school but the struggle to find food and riding the bus all night had worn her down. She hadn’t been to class in three weeks. Michelle had a grandmother in Chicago. Once I got my paycheck, I bought her a one-way ticket there.

There were other girls, many of whom didn’t tell me their stories and I didn’t always ask. Sometimes words seemed superfluous. At 1 a.m. with the temperature well below zero, what did I really need to know except that I could offer what they needed? A safe, warm place to sleep that night with breakfast and a bag lunch in the morning.

Alex Nelson says about 40 percent of homeless youth self-identify as “queer” or GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender). Nelson is a homeless youth outreach coordinator at District 202, a drop-in center for GLBT youth.
“We see queer youth from rural Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota. In the last decade, more young people feel they can come out as queer, but, then, many are kicked out by their families,” Nelson said. He emphasized that District 202 doesn’t provide shelter. “We advocate for queer kids, dealing with homophobia in the system. Agencies have no choice but to educate themselves when 40 percent coming to them are GLBT. But, when transgender youth walk in, it’s a different deal.

Transgendered people in general are especially vulnerable to violence on the streets and, until recently, transgendered youth found little safety in shelters either—if they were even allowed in.

“They’re asked if they have a penis or not—to decide what ‘side’ they’ll sleep on. The shelter workers have to worry ‘If I put a transgendered person with the females and they see this person as male, they’ll freak out. If I put this transgendered youth with the males, what will happen?’ There’s now a policy on how to house transgendered youth at all shelters here. In other cities transgendered youth can’t be placed in shelters.”

Both Nilsson and Nelson point out how sex trafficking targets homeless youth, bringing outstate kids to the Twin Cities and exporting city kids to Las Vegas and New York. Girls and queer youth are especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Now, Nilsson and Nelson say teens do phone sex and stripping to survive, both considered gateways to prostitution.

The stigma faced by transgendered women of color is compounded by racism and homophobia. Nelson says, “Transgendered women can’t get a job. They do sex work because that’s the ONLY place where they feel WANTED for who they really are.”

And with what some have called the pornification of American culture, it looks like there’s far less empathy toward teens being sexually exploited by adults than when I was a teenager in the ’70s.

About 41 percent of homeless youth have been in foster care. A major reason youth end up homeless is they “age out” of that system, being dumped on the street without any support, marginal education and no job-skills.

“Beyond the Foster Care System,” a new book by Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff, recounts the struggles of teens torn from their families, shuffled from placement to placement, sometimes ending up in group homes or the juvenile detention. Too often, the authors write, academic and future expectations of these kids are low, resulting in little attention given to preparing them for independent living. Homeless kids often face the same obstacles.

Getting the skills they need
“Homeless youth really need employment skills—how to fill out a job application, do a resume. Many of us haven’t worked even part-time,” Chris says, though he’s working full-time in a copy shop. “When you’re homeless, the job you need you don’t have the skills to get.”

The Bridge recognizes these needs more than most programs for at-risk youth, offering Independent Living workshops that teach kids how to open a bank account, budget money, how to be responsible on a job. Girls and boys each have a support group. They even have a hip-hop group.
“”The youth study dance, rap, spoken-word, graffiti art. Many youth in crisis, outside the shelter, come every Wednesday to have an outlet and hope for the future,” says counselor Lonte Hill.

The Bridge helps kids apply to go to college.
“One of the things that continues to impress me is these kids’ determination,” says Mike Wolf, an outreach worker at The Bridge. “Every youth in our program is working at least one job and going to school. They’re not satisfied with just survival. They’re building to go further, and stabilization gives them the opportunity to flourish. Give them a stable environment and someone believing in them and they take off!”

Wolf relates that youth at The Bridge are working at the Mall of America, McDonald’s, Holiday Inn, Cub Food, overnight FedEx and Target. Resembling a father, Wolf beams, “One of our girls with a 3.5 GPA just got accepted at Howard University.” In Washington, D.C., Howard is a prestigious historically-black college, whose graduates include Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, NYC’s first African-American Mayor David Dinkins, and Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison.

Nilsson says how we deal with homeless youth will determine whether we can end homelessness. “After poverty, being a homeless youth is the second predictor for becoming homeless as an adult,” she says.

Hennepin County’s 2000 five-year plan to end homelessness didn’t provide the promised 200 beds for youth. And Governor Tim Pawlenty has cut homeless funding by almost 30 percent, resulting in 100 fewer beds for youth.

Are politicians serious about addressing homelessness? The answer is found in that adage “follow the money.” Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak imitates Bill Clinton’s “compassionate” speeches, but he and the City Council shovel tens of millions in public dollars to private developers building condominiums for sale at $200,000 to $1 million each, while closing homeless shelters. Older housing stock (once the cheaper housing that poor people could afford) continues to be gentrified or torn down for condominiums while the Bush Administration makes huge funding cuts in public housing.

So homeless youth like Chris also compete with working-poor adults not only for entry-level jobs, but for the shrinking amount of low-income housing.
“Landlords go with an adult who has a rental history. Strategic moves must be done. Give people a chance to stabilize into being self-sustaining,” observes Hill, noting that Minnesota has the nation’s highest homeownership rate (77 percent), resulting in a big gap in rental housing. “Homeless people are just like you and me. The average person is two paychecks away from homeless.”
The State Legislature that passed almost $1 billion in funding for Twins and Gophers stadiums failed to authorize funding for the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act SF 2833 that also passed.

“We’re tired of having plans; we need action that’s funded,” Nelson underscores. He emphasizes that since 2008 is a budgetary year, funding for the homeless should be the priority.

The passage of SF 2833, written by advocates who work directly with youth, is the first time that Minnesota has passed a bill for homeless youth.
Any given day, 600 homeless children and youth are in TC schools. Nilsson and Nelson concur that how these youth are dealt with in terms of services and education is crucial.

“Will they end up getting a college education? Or will they stay on the streets and end up in the corrections system?” Nilsson asks. “When we talk about youth making bad choices or being violent, look at what OUR response is to youth. We’re saying, you’re not even worth shelter.”

“We say children are the future—yet, they’re the ones we strip of resources! Then, we go after them about crime!” Alex Nelson’s quiet demeanor cracks. “What goes around comes around—even if you ignore it now.”

For more info: www.mnhomelesscoalition.org;
The Bridge: 612-377-8800 , 2200 Emerson Ave. S., Mpls.; District 202: 612-871-5559, 1601 Nicollet Ave. S., Mpls.