By Antoine Craigwell,
     Sr. Correspondent
    
     Eric L. Jones,
     Photography 

New York, NY-In an exclusive interview last Friday, May 23, Carl Siciliano, founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Center, spoke, about it, the work it is doing, the challenges, and its future plans. The Center, he said, was established in 2002 as a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth after he experienced the traumatic event surrounding Ali Forney, a homeless African-American gay youth who was killed on the streets of Harlem.


 
Instrumental in the formation of the Center, said Siciliano, were two significant events that came together: A study published in the late 1990s by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene revealed that young men who have sex with men, especially those who live on the streets, account for 20 percent of all HIV infection rates; and the death  of Ali Forney, who was homeless and whose demise drew attention to the plight of  the number of youth who not only live on the streets, but are infected with HIV and are unaware of their status.
 
 
 
"I wanted to scream," said Siciliano. "There was so much money coming into the city to provide condoms, but no other support for them, especially for those out on the streets."

Yet, he added, even as the city is stepping up its activities to get more youth tested the numbers in HIV infection rates are showing a sharp climb, attributable to more competent forms of testing.

 
 
 
 
THE CENTER

The Ali Forney Center offers homeless youth the opportunity to get off the streets by providing housing, medical care and educational services to close to 1,000 young people a year. Of this number, about 150 to 200 a year receive emergency housing, about 50 a year move into transitional housing, about 500 a day come into the drop in center, and the balance are attended to on the streets.

"I believe that housing is a valuable tool for HIV prevention because without the stability of a place to live, kids living out on the streets prostitute themselves. We average 30 to 40 new intakes a month in our space at 527 West 22nd Street," said Siciliano, who added that the center has an average of 50 young people on a waiting list for emergency housing.

With 10 apartments, two in Manhattan and eight in Brooklyn, providing housing for 52 young people, the Center's clients are 50 percent Black, 30 percent Latino and 20 percent White, Native Indian or Pacific Islander, and 60 percent have identified as gay, 20 percent lesbian and 20 percent transgender constitute its gender population. Within the last nine months, said Siciliano, the Center saw an increase in young LGBT Mexicans, Jamaicans, and others from the Caribbean.

 
     
 
Examining the possible causes for the rise in the number of homeless LGBT youth, Siciliano said that he has been struck by the phenomena of the amount of young people who are shouldering the brunt of all the homophobia in the U.S.

"As an adult, I can move wherever I want and devise ways for my protection. But our gay youth carry the brunt for the rights and equalities for everyone. When I think that 25 percent of our youth coming out are facing rejection, it seems like we've done a terribly poor job. We, as adults, have done very little to protect them. We need to do much more nationally and internationally, and while we push them to come out, accept and acknowledge their sexuality, we're not doing enough to protect them," said Siciliano.

 
 
 
 
SUCCESSES

As the executive director, Sciliano, 43, who is White and lives with his partner, an African-American who teaches dance at St. Luke's Church; has amassed years of experience in social work. In his life's journey he worked with the Catholic Worker Movement, which was founded by Doris Day, was a postulant in a Benedictine Monastery, and worked with Safe Space where he met Ali Forney.

"When I worked as a director of the drop in center for teens with Safe Space, I was shocked at how in New York City many youth were being attacked for being gay and how they couldn't get access to services," Siciliano recalled. "When I was at Safe Space, nine kids were murdered, seven were gay and one of them was Ali Forney."

Since the establishment of the Ali Forney Center, Siciliano recounted tales of young people, who because of their sexual orientation, were abused by their families and those to whom they turned to for help. One of the Center's first clients, a 17-year old lesbian from Russia, fled her home and lived in Central Park after her mother tried to rip her scalp off after she told her mother that she was a lesbian. A young man from the Dominican Republic, who came to the Center, was terrified that his mother would find out that he is gay. But because of his age, and in compliance with the law, the Agency for Child Services had to be informed. The young man's mother came for him and took him to the Dominican Republic to do to him things she could not do in the U.S. After he escaped and made his way back to the U.S., he returned to the Center, where he was given protection and placed in foster care. He detailed the abuse he endured from a faith healer who was paid by his mother to beat the "gayness" out of him.

But the story Siciliano recalls with horror is, reminiscent of the abandonment Oedipus experienced as a child, of a young lesbian who went to spend a summer with her aunt and uncle in Newark, N.J. When they found out that she was a lesbian, the aunt and uncle took her in their car to a secluded spot in the woods, far from home, pushed her out of the vehicle and drove off leaving her there.
 
 
     
 
"Usually there is a little more of a stigma about putting a daughter out on the streets compared to putting a son," Siciliano said.

However, despite the abuses, the Center lists among its accomplishments success stories: from one of the Brooklyn houses there is a youth who founded the Gay & Straight Alliance at Medgar Evers College, another youth expects to tour with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in Brazil, another youth as a runway model famously closed the Jean Paul Gautier show wearing a black wedding dress and accompanied by a pair of wolves, another is an intern with Patricia Fields, the clothing designer, and a transgender girl who is a student at the Fashion Institute, has two jobs, owns her own apartment and dreams of her own design line.

"In the 90s I was attending funerals. Today, a remarkable difference, I get to see the kids dancing," said Siciliano.

Along with the successes, Siciliano ruefully admits, there were some occasions when he had felt no pride because a few others required more care and treatment than the Center could provide. He recalled one instance of a young man who was abused by his mother's boyfriend, who, on learning that the young man was gay, shoved two fingers up into his nose. The young man, bleeding and in pain came to the Center where he was helped. Despite the Center's efforts, the young man, who had obtained an internship with Martha Stewart, also had a serious drug habit. Attempts to help him failed and the Center was forced to discharge him from the emergency housing program.

 
 
 
 
LABELING AND PHILOSOPHY

According to Siciliano, the Center retreats from labeling any of the youth with problems as failures, instead they have recognized that the Center is committed to working with them more than once, "which means, we don't give up on them. We realize the kids have to fail once, maybe twice and we're here to support them whenever they need to be better," he said.

But as with young men and women growing into their own awareness, there is friction, some of which erupts in violence. Recalling the experience of Forney when he was homeless (while living in a homeless shelter, Forney was forced to barricade himself in a room to avoid being attacked and beaten up by a gang of boys who found out that he was gay), Siciliano said that the Center draws the line at violence in any of their residences.

"We have an obligation to provide a safe environment for the kids and we draw the line at anyone violating that," he said.

The Center's basic philosophy is centered on providing a therapeutic healing and nurturing environment of smaller and more intimate housing settings, which Siciliano said goes against previous attempts by other social service agencies who warehoused young people.

"Our model of housing is very critical to the kids. I worked with homeless adults, but homeless kids have not identified with being homeless. They just see themselves as going through a phase. We try to put them in homes where they can see that they are valuable. When a kid is taken to a forest and thrown out, it is as if their gayness cancels out their humanity," said Siciliano.

He maintains that the LGBT movement functions from an adult perspective and in order to address the needs of the young who are coming out, there must be a shift in thinking.

"There has to be more thought around the balance of sexual freedom and protecting our youth. A part of me thinks that as a gay youth agency working to protect gay youth, we're on the cutting edge of a movement," Siciliano said.

 
 
     
 
HOW IT'S ALL PAID FOR

But while the Center is providing services for homeless LGBT youth, Siciliano acknowledges that it comes with a hefty price tag. The Center's annual budget is close to $3.5 million and is made up from a grant of $1million to support transitional housing from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), $1.4 million from a HUD sponsored and administered program, Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), and the balance from private foundations, corporate support, donations and fundraising events. The Center also receives discretionary funds from the New York City Council, about $600,000, but, said Sciliano, there is uncertainty from year to year how much money they would get.

While HOPWA and City Council funds are reimbursable, the Center is caught in a financial Catch-22 type situation. Siciliano said that they usually have to spend money before they can be reimbursed, which can take more than two months, and this causes them to worry where money is coming from to pay for other services. For example, he said, in April 2008, they had to layout $500,000 in expenses, including rents for the apartments and salaries, but have not yet been reimbursed. The Center's operating budget is about 92 percent of all the money they receive. HUD allows them to use 5 percent for administrative costs, as does HOPWA who allows them to use only 7 percent. The challenge, Siciliano said, is that with the HUD program the Center receives 70 percent, that is $700,000, and they have to raise the remaining $300,000.

"I realize that we need to raise about $1 million from non-government money. To date, we have raised $500,000 and we're trying to reach out to the LGBT community to help us," he said.
 
 
 
GOING FORWARD

In 2006, to raise awareness and draw attention to the Center's work, there was an ad campaign all over Brooklyn and last year the Village Voice newspapers in their Pride issue referred to the Center's campaign. Looking to the future, the Center is working to produce a how-to-manual for those organizations in other cities or countries that want to do what they are doing.
"I get calls from people all across the country and the world who want to do something about the kids with no place to go," Siciliano said.

The Center is also working to raise enough money to move into a larger space in Lower Manhattan, where they can provide drop in services 24 hours, seven days a week, where they feel most of the young people are located, and buy apartments, instead of renting them.

One of the Center's goals is to raise their profile among gay African-Americans who can take more active roles with these young people, as with a mentorship program.

"It has to be emphasized that the kids need to know that they are safe. I remember one experience when I was at Safe Space and I had a conversation with Ali Forney who said, 'You know Carl, when I first saw you, you looked young as if you could be for sale on Christopher Street, but now you look old as if you would be out there to buy something.' I replied that one day you'd know that you don't equate love with commerce. Little did I know that Ali would be murdered and not experience love," Siciliano said.