AFC in the News

Living on the Edge: Two documentaries to spotlight homeless queer youth
New York Blade, February 21, 2003
By Dan Callahan

Queer teenagers are coming out younger and younger due to a more accepting social and media climate. Unfortunately, this means that more of them are being thrown out on the streets by homophobic parents.

These vagrant kids may be largely invisible, but if two local documentary filmmakers, Joe Somodi and Jose Santos, have their way, they will soon become much more visible.

Both men are trying to give them a voice through documentaries on the subject. Somodi is focusing his prospective film, tentatively titled “Living Close to the Knives,” on the Ali Forney Center, the only emergency shelter program for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning youth in the city. “The title is appropriate,” says Somodi, “because these kids are on the edge, they’re on the fringe of society, and they’re always on their guard.”

Carl Siciliano, who has been working with homeless kids in the city since 1994, is in charge of the Ali Forney Center. “The way that public policy looks at homelessness, you’re either an adult or a child,” says Siciliano. “There is this group of people between the ages of 17 to 24 that don't really fit into either the adult homeless system or the foster care system.” Many homeless kids have run away from the foster care system and aren't ready yet for the next step. “The worst thing you can do with these kids is put them into the adult system,” says Siciliano. “You’re putting them with people who have a hardcore homeless coping personality and that's exactly what I don't want these kids to acquire.”

Siciliano is a well-built man with a calm, beatific face. There is a welcoming, protective aura about him, and also a tranquil toughness that reflects on various setbacks. Though he has suffered disappointments in his line of work, he could not ignore the fact that gay kids were being mistreated in other homeless shelters.

Many of the queer kids out on the streets want to come to Ali Forney because they've been beaten up or harassed at other centers and they’re afraid to go back. “Rival street gangs have really infiltrated the homeless youth services,” says Siciliano. “They use those services to recruit kids into gangs, and those gangs are very homophobic. It’s hard for a gay kid to go to a homeless service setting without really being picked on for being gay, in spite of the efforts of the staff at these centers.’

The center is named after a kid that Siciliano had been close to. “Over the years you work with thousands of kids, and some of them you don’t know very well, but Ali Forney was somebody who stood out,” Siciliano says, looking away shyly. “He was dedicated to the safety and welfare of the other kids. He’d come in with a knapsack every day and give out hundreds of condoms to kids on the streets.”

Forney was murdered on the streets in 1997. “I was devastated when he was killed,” Siciliano admits. “I put his picture on my desk at home and looked at it every day. I couldn’t cope with thinking that the next generation of Ali Forney’s wouldn't have a safe space of their own.” On June 19, 2001, Siciliano started the Ali Forney Center at Metropolitan Community Church. In mid-February, the center moved to 807 Ninth Ave., between 53rd and 54th streets, right above Bar Nine.

The new location is still being decorated and the atmosphere is positive and cheerful. There are two rooms with six beds, a kitchen, a television and a small office for Siciliano. A framed print of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” awaits hanging.

“I want kids to feel normal,” Siciliano says. “Being in a basement surrounded by pipes and people sleeping on cots, obviously it’s 100 times better than being out on the street, but it’s so important that these kids have a homelike environment.”

The big focus for the kids is figuring out where to go after staying at the center. “Let’s say a kid comes here and he has a job working at Duane Reade,” says Siciliano. “But they don’t have a bank account and they aren’t saving their money. So we let them stay here for 30 days and if they co-operate with us we are willing to extend past that period, within reason. We have a case manager who works with the kids and creates a housing plan for them.” Right now there are 30 to 35 kids who are on a list every night waiting to get into the center. Somodi hopes that his documentary will help raise awareness of the problems queer homeless teens have and that more beds will be available to them as soon as possible.“I need to find funding so I can spend a solid four months with the center and get a really intense view of the kid’s day to day routines,” says Somodi. “Everyone’s story has the same theme-they are searching for acceptance.”

Santos is taking a broader view of the issue with his forthcoming documentary “American Tramps,” which will look at queer homeless youth in four cities and focus more on the kids themselves rather than the centers that house them. “It’s not going to be just talking heads,” says the impassioned Santos. “We’re using German Expressionist lighting, jump cuts, slow motion.”

Susan Sarandon has expressed interesting in narrating the film. Santos is trying to keep the kids’ best interests at heart. “I don't want the kids to be exploited; 60 percent of the proceeds from the film will go to places like the Ali Forney Center and other centers like it, in perpetuity.”

Santos is unequivocal about his feelings for the subject and his belief that it needs more exposure. “These kids want love,” he says. “At the age of 14 or 15 they have a sense of identity that is incredible, they're proud of being gay. What kind of society are we when we turn a kid out into the streets simply because they’re not straight?”

Santos thinks there should be a law that makes it a criminal act for a parent to turn their children out of the house because they are gay. “We need to take care of our young,” he says. “When you hear a kid say that the only communication or interaction they’ve had with the gay community is through a $5 blow job, you have to stop and think.”