New York City's Ali Forney Center will
take over a building with a $620,000 award from the city council, gay
glossy The
Advocate
reported.
The award will allow the organization
to take over a 20-bed emergency shelter in Brooklyn. The nonprofit
group Turning Point previously used the building to shelter homeless
and runaway LGBT youths. The Ali Forney Center was given the award
to take over the building after Turning Point failed to comply with
the city's licensing requirements. The transfer of the shelter from
Turning Point to the Ali Forney Center means that the number of beds
for homeless gay teens in the city will neither increase nor
decrease.
“We are grateful to have the
additional shelter beds,” Carl Siciliano, the group's executive
director, told The Advocate. “It is a terrible thing to see
so many LGBT youth forced to survive out in the streets while they
wait for beds.”
Siciliano added that he hopes to have
the new shelter on line by October.
The additional beds will boost the Ali
Forney Center's capacity to 77, leaving more than 100 young LGBT
people on its waiting list.
“Support has really eroded in a time
when there are more kids than ever,” Sicialiano said. “There's
this gross lack of capacity right now. So many kids are being
affected by the recession.”
The center received nationwide
attention in June when comedian Tracy
Morgan agreed to meet with several of the young people living at the
center as part of his tour to apologize for an anti-gay routine
he delivered several weeks earlier in Nashville.