New research is shining a light on the issues homeless Rainbow-identifying people face, and is dispelling a common misconception about how it occurs.
Brodie Fraser, a PhD candidate at Otago University and an activist in the Rainbow community, said because previous censuses didn’t ask sexual orientation and gender identity questions, and because there were few surveys counting the number of people who were homeless, it was difficult to identify how many people were part of both groups.
This, alongside the lack of research on the topic in New Zealand, meant there was little public awareness about the issues the group faced, she said.
“The queer community is overrepresented in lots of other statistics like mental health, substance abuse and sexual assault ,” she said.
“When you combine all that, it’s this big storm of things that are leading this to this group becoming disproportionately represented.”
International studies estimate about 20 to 40 per cent of people who were homeless identified as LGBTQI+, despite the community only making up about five to 10 per cent of a population.
Fraser said there was a “particular focus”, especially internationally, on the story that young Rainbow people get kicked out of their homes because of their identity.
While that was the case for some of the people she interviewed, the ways people became homeless were more complex and nuanced than that, Fraser said.
“A lot of it just has to do with points of intervention, so maybe a young person was kicked out of home but there was no support for them.
“For some of them, it was because there weren’t mental health services available and they'd lost their houses, or there wasn’t enough support for addiction.”
Fraser said “discrimination or fear of discimination” was an experience everyone she’d interviewed faced, for example, when looking for flatmates who would accept their identity.
“In the job market and in the housing market, they all faced quite a lot of stigma both for their queer identity, but also for being homeless.”
There were also additional challenges for Rainbow-identifying people when seeking support. Fraser said this was because social services usually categorised clients by whether they were male or female.
“The impression I got from my participants was that a lot of them didn’t engage with homeless shelters or other social services because they were really scared of being in those places, especially trans participants.”
But, because changing someone’s gender on their identification documents was a lengthy process, there were times when issues arose, she said.
“People very often have the incorrect documents, and if you’re a trans woman getting assigned to men’s space, that obviously doesn't work.”
Her research for He Kainga Ora, funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Endeavour grant , interviewed eight people between October 2018 and February 2019. They all identified as being part of the Rainbow community and had been or were homeless when interviewed for the study.
Fraser said she made a “conscious decision” to talk to people who might have not used housing service providers to avoid any bias around how the providers were performing.
“A lot of people in the community have had such negative experiences with other institutions … and that makes them a bit more wary of those sorts of systems.”
Fraser called for more Government funding for homelessness services, as well as targeted funding to cater specifically to LGBTQI+ people who were homeless.
She said funding was important because the reasons behind homelessness among LGBTQI+ people, and the fact that there were few support systems catered to them, was “because the systems that we have aren’t working to protect people”, rather than “an individual failing on their part”.
Sexual orientation and gender identity questions will be asked in the 2023 Census.
Rainbow Youth executive director Frances Arns echoed Fraser’s findings.
Arns said there were also mental health, healthcare and income disparities that contributed to the higher likelihood that someone who identified as LGBTQI+ could become homeless.
She said while there were cases of LGBTIQ+ people, especially youth, ending up homeless because they were not accepted or safe at home, “it’s important not to centre the narrative around that”.
“It places the onus on the individual and on that whānau. But, actually, the problem is with society and the structures and systems that exist around that whānau that hasn’t equipped them with the education and awareness in order to accept and understand their child.
“It’s the services that aren't there to help them work through that, and then also the services that aren’t able to adequately support that young person and into stable and safe housing immediately,” Arns said.
She said she didn’t blame the providers of homelessness services because they were operating in and were informed by a society that wasn’t always inclusive of diverse genders and sexualities.
A “multi-layered” approach was needed to improve these services, Arns said.
She said this may look like providing training for staff so they can understand Rainbow identities and needs, or creating facilities that could cater for diverse genders.
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