Part Three: Shelter

The third and final part of We Are The Children is about finding shelter. There are tens of thousands of people in New York City’s homeless shelters. The city has only a few dozen beds for gay, lesbian and transgender youth. The rest of the homeless LGBT youth, most of whom are black and Latino, an increasing number of them HIV positive and still in the throes of adolescence, go into the system. It’s really bad for those who don’t conform to traditional gender roles; there’s violence in the shelters. The Ali Forney Center – in Manhattan – can shelter only 12 LGBT youth at a time; there are more coming. Its wait list houses many more into their hundreds. One alternative is sleeping in the basement of a midtown church.

In part three, special thanks to Sylvia’s Place.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

This is Part Three.
Go back to Part Two.

Duration: 13:41

Credits

• Directed & Produced: James West
• Still Photography: Kate Kunath
• “Alleys & Bushes”, by Rob Bless (used with permission)
• Additional reporting and producing: Lauryn Siegel

2 Comments

Reply

November 9, 2008 8:57 am

Marc Fennell

james this is really fuckn good. its beautifully produced, the talent is great, the rhythm in particular is spot-on. why isnt this on youtube?

Reply

November 12, 2008 4:42 pm

Anonymous

Hey James

This is great work, love the angle you took on this.

NYC is a crazy place, Thanks for the insight which has inspired me again on working in this community.

cheers