Dec 05, 2008  |  By: AMY CAVANAUGH  | COMMENTS     

Discussions are underway in Montgomery County to open Maryland’s first residential home for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.

Led by Hearts & Homes for Youth, a group that provides services to youth who are abused, neglected or homeless, the discussions remain preliminary, but Rex Smith, the organization’s president, said he’s already identified locations in Rockville or Gaithersburg for the home.

“We believe there’s a need here,” he said. “So we need to figure out a way, even in these hard times, that we can save a few lives.”

Smith said plans for the home began when Hearts & Homes sought to find foster parents who were willing to take in gay youth for their foster program, which currently has about 30 youth.

That conversation yielded the idea of a temporary housing facility for gay youth, Smith said. The organization worked to acquire a house to use, but that fell through, putting the plan on hold.

“Then three or four weeks ago,” he said, “I was sitting around looking at what I have and I thought, ‘Why not use one of the homes that’s available now?’”

Smith contacted Equality Maryland and Montgomery County Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg for support, and a joint meeting set for 5:30 p.m. Dec. 15 at County Council Office Building in Rockville will consider the plan’s viability. The meeting is open to the public.

Carrie Evans, director of policy and planning at Equality Maryland, said she hopes the meeting results in “a good core group of people committed to seeing it through and getting it up and running as soon as possible.”

Evans said that the house would be a transitional home and not a shelter.

“A shelter is a temporary, overnight place for people, versus a transitional home that allows people to get on their feet and save money,” she said. “We looked at a residential home in New York and the Wanda Alston House in D.C., which are longer term. Kids can stay there indefinitely and it’s not just a place to lay your head.”

The Wanda Alston House, a transitional home for gay youth in D.C., opened in July. Transgender Health Empowerment operates the home, which can temporarily house up to eight gay youth between the ages of 16 and 22.

Using the Alston House and shelters in New York City as models, Evans said the new home in Montgomery County would “help people get their lives back on track, through education, job training or whatever they need.”

Michelle Sewell, director of residential services at Hearts & Homes, has attended Equality Maryland and Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays meetings in local counties, both to recruit foster parents and raise awareness about the new home.

Evans said that Equality Maryland has been working with Hearts & Homes for about six months to increase foster care participation.

“We’ve been brokering relations between them and PFLAG, to match them with a group that could be a great foster group for parents of LGBT teens,” she said.

“When Rex said to us, ‘OK, how about having a home?’ we saw it as bringing two communities together who can use their skills to provide services. We need to make sure that our community and our youth are being served in an appropriate way and people who can help support it financially get more involved.”

Smith said the next step is determining how to best secure funding for the house, realizing that the amount of funds needed depends on the number of kids who will live there, which could range from five to 10.

“It would cost anywhere from $500,000 to $700,000 a year,” he said. “We’re trying to find funds and raise the level of consciousness not just among participants in Equality Maryland or PFLAG, but anyone who’s willing to do this.

“We need to find out to what degree we can depend on private funding to support this.”

Smith said the house, as planned, would provide several services for youth living there.

“We provide 24-hour supervision with counselors, a program manager, a social worker, a nurse on a part-time basis and a therapist on a part-time basis because kids deal with so many issues,” he said.

Smith noted that social workers would work with families to try to reunite them with runaway children.

“Of those we don’t reunite, some go into foster care and some transition to adulthood,” he said. “And for those, we provide life skills.”

Smith said that existing Hearts & Homes housing is intended for youth between 14 and 18 years old, but he expects that the home for gay youth would draw a slightly older age range.