At the heart of The Center: Making a difference

By Cassandra Dowell
On a chilly Wednesday evening, a group of about 40 youth gather in an open room on the second floor of a South Side shelter known as the Center on Halsted. Outside, the sky darkens as the evening’s collaborative youth group meeting gets underway.

Do-rags, beanies, and caps turned sideways and backward adorn the heads of many of those gathered in a circle for the center’s once-a-month Seminar for Success. The majority of those present are 19 to 23 years old, although the center’s youth program is open to teens as young as 13 and to young adults up to 24 years old. The attendees are predominantly black and Hispanic.

Regardless of race or gender, the youths share a common denominator: They are part of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender community.

And for many, like Lizette Sierra, 20, who have found their way here, the center is not just a hang out space, but a home.

According to Nicholas Ray’s “An Epidemic of Homelessness,” a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, about 20 to 40 percent of the 575,000 to 1.6 million number “of all homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).”

According to the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness, “A 2005 University of Illinois report on homeless youth funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services found that as many as 25,000 Illinois youth are homeless.” In 2007, 18 to 21 year olds made up 4 percent of the total homeless population in Chicago, according to a Homeless Count Summary Report published in 2007 by the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness.

According to officials, the Center on Halsted has about 1,400 registered youths and each night serves about 40 to 50 who seek the refuge, counsel and camaraderie of the center.

“Youth come here, and just having those conversations with the youth, and seeing them grow, despite their families missing presence, it does a lot for the soul,” says Antonio Jones, the Center on Halsted’s youth program coordinator. “I know that might sound cliché, but it does. They will thrive in an environment where they are accepted.”

The Center on Halsted opened its doors in 2007 and, according to its own self-description touts itself as “a safe and nurturing environment”—one that “serves as a catalyst for the LGBT community that links and provides community resources, and enriches life experiences.”

Center of Success

In the center’s youth space stands a door, painted and propped as a canvas, in-between an art room and a more intimate group meeting space. “Building a Safe Place for Family and Friends” is written across it in bold letters.

Jeremy Carter, the Center on Halsted’s prevention coordinator, leads the evening’s Seminar for

Success.

Carter begins by urging everyone to stand up. He stands in front of the wall-sized window and the group encloses around him, despite loud chatter and some hesitation among participants.

The group activity is intended to help these young adults become successful by learning “how to

meet people where they are at,” says Carter.

“Some of us will learn a little bit about each other. Some of us will learn a lot,” Carter says.

When a statement Carter makes applies to someone, he or she is told to step forward. And in order to show support for those who step forward, Carter tells the participants to cross their thumb over their middle fingers, with the pinky and pointer finger sticking out.

“It’s not a gang sign or anything like that,” said Carter. “It symbolizes support.”

When Carter asks whether anyone has experienced being “harassed by police,” the group takes an eager step forward. One girl, previously seated, leaps out of her seat.

“If you’ve ever seen an act of violence … shooting, stabbing,” Carter says, “step forward.”

The majority of participants move forward, laughing. For them the answer is a no-brainer: Yes.

For some, the activity stirs up their emotions. One young man returns to his seat before the exercise is over.

Expressing his exhaustion, he says, “You have to be physically and emotionally involved.”
Soon two staffers begin cleaning the nearby kitchen and preparing a meal with ingredients from two large-sized bins. For some, the meal that the Center on Halsted provides is the only way they will eat tonight.

Some are homeless; they have been kicked out of their homes because they opened up about their sexual orientation, or LGBT status.

Jones, the youth program coordinator, began working at the Center on Halsted in February 2008 after working at the state’s Department of Children and Family Services..

Jones, who says he has always been “interested in social services, especially child welfare,” notes that there are several youth at the center who are homeless because they “came out” to their family about their sexual orientation.

Jones says he enjoys his work and seeing how the center assists those who need it. Artwork given to him by students whom he has helped over the last year dot the walls of his office. One drawing shows the slender body of a female with red heels and black fish-net stockings. “Look @ me” is written along the woman’s torso.

Home away from home

Lizette Sierra began going to the center a year ago. She says she told her mother about her lesbian status when she was 14 years old and was very open about her sexual identity throughout high school.

Sierra, who has light brown skin, brown eyes, and black hair buzzed above her ears, describes herself as being “kind of masculine looking.” She prefers baggie pants and loose-fitting shirts to dresses and more feminine-looking clothes.

Sierra says she first heard about the center when she was a member of a gay-straight alliance at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But it was her job at the Shell Circle K gas station located near the center that ultimately led her to attend…

...Reggie Scruggs, an intern at the center, started working there Oct. 27, 2008. He says that he had never been to the center before working there, but had heard about it.

“The first day of working, it was like, culture shock,” he recalls. “… I had never been exposed to that many minority LGBT. It all came at me at once. It just opened my eyes to like a ton of different perspectives.”

For example, Scruggs said, “most people think that gays are like all in Boystown”--referring to a well-known gay neighborhood on the city’s North Side. Scruggs says that area is a “very small portion of the LGBT community.”

“There’s a larger population out there that [many] don’t know much about,” he adds.

Since her experience at the center, Sierra has moved back home to Naperville, Ill., to live with her mother and three younger sisters. She no longer works at the station and has been working at Meijer Grocery since August of 2008.

Sierra notes that she was nervous about coming out to her mother because she never heard anyone in her family discuss homosexuality. However, she always felt her mom accepted her. Sierra said that now “basically everyone knows” about her lesbian status and that she “feels comfortable” in her home.

Sierra remains in contact with some of the people she met through the center and feels that many who attend greatly need the center’s support.

“A lot of them come from those kind of families where they’re not accepted at all,” said Sierra.