Covenant House Celebrates Pride Month

As a direct service provider for youth experiencing homelessness, Covenant House embraces Pride Month and the deep and multiple meanings it holds for us and our youth.

Today, young queer people face ever-increasing threats to their safety and well-being, simply for living as their authentic selves. Our most recent youth survey showed that 43% of young people in residence at Covenant House identify as LGBTQ+. Almost 1 in 5 identify as transgender or nonbinary. The danger of being young and queer is undeniably visible in the data of who is showing up to our doors for help.

Which brings us to the first meaning of Pride at Covenant House: It is an outrage that so many LGBTQ+ youth are being forced into homelessness, but we are proud to be there to support them. We’re proud to be a place where they can feel protected, secure, and respected without having to hide who they are. We’re proud to be a place where they can experience unconditional love, often for the first time.

Many of our LGBTQ+ youth have gone through traumatic family rejection, been the targets of unjust and discriminatory laws, and faced increasing social stigmatization. Not only do those experiences directly lead to homelessness, they teach young queer people not to trust. That’s a lesson that makes it difficult to live a successful, fulfilling life.

The core of Covenant House’s work is to provide young people with unconditional love and absolute respect. We have learned in our 50+ years of serving youth in crisis that having relationships with adults based on those principles is often the key to a youth’s stability. The dangers our LGBTQ+ youth face today make building those positive, healthy, trusting relationships with them more important than ever.

When our intake staff assign a young trans person to a shelter floor that matches their gender identity, we show them they belong.

When a young queer person whose parents kicked them out is met with love and acceptance when they tell their case manager who they are, we show them their identity does not make them unworthy.

And as those relationships develop and strengthen, we chip away at the lessons that rejection and stigma have taught our LGBTQ+ youth. We get to see them thrive. And that’s the central meaning of Pride at Covenant House: We are so proud of our LGBTQ+ youth.

Witnessing young people overcome immense challenges is the great privilege of this work. This June, we recommit to providing the LGBTQ+ youth in our care with the unconditional love and absolute respect they both need and deserve.

We also welcome you to read more about the incredible stories of our LGBTQ+ residents and how you can support them by taking part in Strides for Pride this June.