Children's Bureau Express

National Survey on LGBT Homeless Youth

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law partnered with The Palette Fund and the True Colors Fund to present Serving Our Youth: Findings from a National Survey of Services Providers Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth Who Are Homeless or At Risk of Becoming Homeless. This report presents data from a web-based Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Homeless Youth Provider Survey, which was conducted from October 2011 through March 2012. The goal of the survey was to evaluate how homeless youth organizations are serving the LGBT population as well as the population's prevalence. More than 350 agencies in the United States are represented in the survey data.

Nearly 95 percent of respondents said they worked with LGBT homeless and runaway youth in the past year. Approximately 40 percent of the clientele requesting services from the agencies are LGBT youth. Roughly 46 percent of homeless LGBT youth cited family rejection because of his/her sexual orientation as the primary reason they ran away and are now homeless. Approximately 68 percent of LGBT homeless youth seeking services have experienced family rejection and 54 percent have experienced abuse.

The 15-page report includes a description of the survey, background information on the group surveyed, as well as final observations.

Serving Our Youth: Findings from a National Survey of Services Providers Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth Who Are Homeless or At Risk of Becoming Homeless is available for download on the Williams Institute website:

http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Durso-Gates-LGBT-Homeless-Youth-Survey-July-2012.pdf (2 MB)

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