![]() ![]() “No plumbing, no electricity,” Christopher said.ĪJ was just 16 when his Vietnamese immigrant father told him to get out of his house, unable to accept his admission that he was gay. They shared a room and a soiled mattress in an abandoned building. He and his friends used the drug to stay awake, he said, so they would not get jumped. Soon he was selling his body on Santa Monica Boulevard to support a methamphetamine habit. “But then I go, ‘How come that’s not my story? Why didn’t you kill yourself? How did you make it through all that?’”Ĭhristopher said that on his first night without a roof over his head, he shared a drink with two men who took turns raping a girl who had passed out on the side of a highway. “I been hearing about my peers committing suicide because of the teasing and bullying … and of course I understand,” he said, staring at a web of scars on his left forearm. She filed a restraining order against him in court. When he turned 18, he said, his grandmother kicked him out of the family home. He stole money from his grandmother, swallowed his brother’s medication and cut himself with razors. To dull the hurt, he turned to alcohol and drugs. “They’re talking about girls and parties … and I knew in middle school that I liked boys and wanted to hold their hands.”Īt school, classmates would pelt him with food and milk cartons. “Queer” was among the more polite names Christopher was called while growing up, before he even knew what the barbs meant.Ī slight 22-year-old with a shock of red hair, he said he stood out in his large Latino family in Pacoima, a place he calls “the ghetto of the Valley.” But they say their sexual or gender identity often plays a role in the breakdown of their families. Many come from families with a history of abuse, neglect, addiction, incarceration or mental illness. Gay and transgender youths become homeless for the same reasons as others their age. Using public records and other sources, The Times was able to independently verify some details they shared about their family histories. The men agreed to speak openly about their lives, including illegal drug use and other criminal activity, on the condition that their full names not be used. In recent weeks, a Times reporter and a photographer spent time with several gay homeless men in their early 20s. Police officers are quick to issue tickets, and the streets are full of predators. “They haven’t been on the streets for years and years,” he said, “so they don’t look bad.”īlending in is part of how AJ and Alex survive on the streets. But it is a largely hidden population, said Simon Costello, who manages the drop-in center frequented by AJ and Alex. ![]()
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