LGBTQ Youth Space offers community
‘This space exists to support, affirm and celebrate all gender identities and sexual orientations’
SAN JOSE » For the longest time, Pia Cruz was the only transgender person her age she knew.
“And besides my two ex-boyfriends, I was the only queer person that I knew, which was really quite lonely,” the 21-year- old San Jose resident said. “You want other people who can relate to your struggles.”
Cruz’s search for community ended in May when she discovered the LGBTQ Youth Space in downtown San Jose. Opened in 2012, the drop-in center at 452 South First St. serves scores of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and ally youths ages 13 to 25.
“This space exists to support, affirm and celebrate all gender identities and sexual orientations,” said Adrienne Keel, direc- tor of LGBTQ programs.
“Basically,” she continued, “it’s a fun hang- out space where people can come be themselves, whatever that looks like, attend groups, get some basic resources, rest and find community.”
The Youth Space receives operational funding from Santa Clara County, but grants and donations underpin its programs and services. Through Wish Book, the drop-in center hopes to raise $10,000.
“These kinds of funds, to me, are a blessing because we can go beyond the bare minimum and really just do some awesome things with our programming,” Keel said.
That programming includes the sort of workshop that introduced Cruz to the Youth Space.
Cruz had been attending a transgender women’s support group a the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center in San Jose, where the workshop was held. She found comfort there, but most of the other partic- ipants had decent paying jobs and loved ones who supported them. Cruz had neither at the time, and she also was much younger.
“That was a huge social barrier for me,” she said.
At the Youth Space, under its vaulted ceilings and inside its cozy lounge, Cruz found what she’d long been missing: peers. The drop-in center also boasts a clothes closet, food pantry and offers a slew of services ranging from counseling to medication management.
“I loved it because it was kids my age, a ton of trans people,” Cruz said. “I didn’t know this many trans people existed.”
Cruz said she was kicked out of her home when she was 18, a year after she came out as transgender. She was homeless off and on until May 2017. Her story is a familiar one.
“We do see a lot of young people facing housing insecurity,” Keel
said. “We also have young people who come here from affluent families, folks coming from families that are super-affirming, folks who are not out to their families. Really, it just runs the gamut.”
“Some youths have great family support,” added Maryanne McGlothlin, director of grants and communications for Caminar, the San Mateo County-based non-profit organization that oversees the Youth Space. “Some are rebuilding it like Pia. Some are finding their own new family because they realize the family they grew up with is not going to accept who they are, at least at this time, and they can build a new family here.”
These days, Cruz is indeed forging new relationships with her mother and father thanks in part to the Youth Space. The center, Keel said, hosts a monthly family night for loved ones to “hash out what they’re feeling.” Cruz, who dreams of being a lawyer, is making plans to resume her studies.
“It’s absolutely vital,” she said about the drop-in center. “I would not be in the place I am today without the Youth Space.”