Since 2022, New York City has experienced an influx of over 210,000 migrants, culminating in a record-high population in homeless shelters.
While the city has sought to expand shelter capacity in general, the number of beds allocated for youth has stagnated at 813 since 2021. None of these spots are set aside specifically for queer youth, despite them making up half of all homeless youth.
“The shortage of beds has really intensified,” said Kate Barnhart, executive director of New Alternatives, a drop-in center for LGBTQ homeless youth. Even the city’s biggest youth shelter, Covenant House on West 41st Street, has been “posting zero availability day after day”, she said.
The west side of Midtown Manhattan, where New Alternatives is located, is a queer enclave that draws LGBTQ homeless youth seeking refuge at dedicated organisations like Ali Forney Center and Sylvia’s Place.
Barnhart has seen a sharp increase in new arrivals this year. They comprise not only young Americans displaced by the rise of anti-LGBTQ state laws, but also an unprecedented rush of international youth fleeing persecution in countries from Venezuela to Uzbekistan.
As detailed in an August report by New York nonprofit Lambda Legal, LGBTQ youth face higher risks of physical and psychological harm in homeless systems. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 58.7% of LGBTQ homeless youth have been sexually victimized, and 62% have attempted suicide.
“There is a lot of verbal harassment, physical assault, having their property stolen. In non-LGBTQ shelters you also have some staff participating in these behaviors,” Barnhart said. “On the street these youth are tempted to hook up with people to spend the night or get into sex work, both of which put them at risk for HIV and sexual assault.”
One of Barnhart’s clients, Brandon Butler, who goes by the name of Paris, recently experienced the tightening crunch on city resources.
His former home became unlivable after it was hit by a storm, a problem that the landlord refused to remedy. “I was literally living in a condemned apartment. There were mushrooms growing out the walls,” he said.
Thankfully, a friend took him in, but conditions remain cramped, and he’s hoping to have his own place again. “It’s a studio,” he said. “We’re three to four people in one little box.”
Paris reached out to Homebase, the agency that handles housing instability. To his astonishment, he was given an intake appointment in February 2025. That’s a wait of over six months, when a typical delay is a month or two, according to Barnhart.
Other forms of assistance are also harder to obtain. “We used to be able to get a pro bono lawyer to take a queer immigration case. Now every lawyer doing immigration work is just swamped,” Barnhart said.
“And there are certainly not enough mental health providers comfortable with queer people, young people, people of color, homeless people – our clients are all four, mostly. All these queer youth are sort of in double trouble,” she said.
Erik Bottcher, District 3 Council Member and longtime LGBTQ advocate, agrees. “Queer runaway and homeless youth are arguably the most vulnerable population in all of New York City, and they’ve been short-shifted for many years with respect to resources,” he said.
“We have a long way to go. Many kids are still left surfing the subways at night or sleeping in the streets, when they deserve safe, supportive places to live.”
While a campaign by activists to expand the youth bracket to include 21- to 24-year-olds was successful in 2017, efforts to fund corresponding shelter beds have stalled.
Jostling for a slice of the city budget is a perennial struggle. For Fiscal Year 2024/25, $1.9 billion is allocated for adult and family shelters, whereas barely $50 million is budgeted for homeless youth.
Legal action could be a catalyst for change. In early 2023, the Legal Aid Society sued the Department of Social Services for failing to process food stamps within the 30-day time limit. Under court order, the city cleared its backlog by March 2024.
It’s a tangled situation that someone like Paris has to navigate to meet a basic human need. “I just want a place where I could turn the key, that I could call my own,” he said.