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As NY1's coverage of Gay Pride Week continues, Shazia Khan reports on a place where young gay and transgender people can find a bed, a meal, and friendship. Many say it's the only place they have to call home.

As Rebecca Walton shows off her bedroom at the Ali Forney Center in Brooklyn, she says it's the first time in five years she feels at home.

"For a couple of years I'd been prostituting and bouncing from shelter to shelter and living in hotels and sleeping on friends' floors, and so on and so forth," she says.

Walton was on the streets after she told her family of her transgender identity. She was born a male, but identifies as a female, and she says she left her Connecticut home at 18 after her stepfather verbally assaulted and attacked her.

Walton's now 23, and is finishing up a medical assistant course. She says her four months at the Ali Forney Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Homeless Youth gave her a sense of comfort.

"It's such a relief," she says. "I don't have to worry about the same things that I had to worry about, [like] am I going to get robbed tonight, or am I going to get arrested tonight?"

Her apartment space is one of two shelters in the city the Ali Forney Center provides LGBT youth. Each apartment has six beds and is staffed with an overnight counselor.

Carl Siciliano founded the publicly and privately funded center in June 2002, after his friend Ali Forney, a gay teen forced out of his home, was killed on the streets.

"I feel strongly that gay kids have special needs," he says. "Gay kids ought to have the right to access shelter without having to worry about being threatened and beaten and terrorized and gay bashed. One of the few youth shelters in the city is Covenant House, and so many kids have told me over the years that they've been beaten up there, threatened, harassed and sexually assaulted."

Siciliano says according to several national surveys, 25 to 40 percent of homeless youth is either gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

"We hear all this stuff about family values and how homosexuality is somehow dangerous to families. Homophobia is dangerous to families," he says. "This shame and this hatred that leads the families to reject their child, that is against family values. I'm telling you, what I'm doing here with these kids - sheltering them, housing them, helping them to get into schools and jobs, creating a safe, homelike environment for them - that is family values."

Every night at 9:00 the residents at the Ali Forney Center gather for a home cooked meal. They say this nightly experience helps them to feel like family.

The apartments are open every night from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Residents are allowed to stay for up to six months, or until they can get a place of their own.

The shelter's locations are not disclosed to protect the residents, so clients are referred to the center.

Javed Lallman has been there for nine months. He came out two years ago.

"The Ali Forney Center had become my real family, since my real family threw me away," he says. "They picked me up and granted me a home."

Lallman is fortunate, because on any given night, over 100 LGBT youths are waiting to find a place they can call home, at least for now.