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Danny
Danny got help from Heartland Alliance’s Neon Street Dorms.
Danny's life had already slipped into turmoil when he came out to his family. He grew up in a middle-class, religious household in Hammond, Indiana, but his parents had moved to Texas for his dad’s job. He was depressed and started drinking heavily after high school, and his older sisters pushed him into a faith-based rehab program, where he pretended to toe the line for months.
“I decided I needed to live my own life, and I came out of the closet,” Danny says. But to his religious family, that was not okay. Like many LGBT teens, he found himself without a home, a shock for a middle-class kid from Hammond, Indiana. And like many LBGT teens, he was scared. “Some of the older people in the shelters like to prey on the younger people to supply their needs sexually,” he says. “A lot of men hit on me. It didn’t make me feel comfortable.”
A staff member at the transitional shelter where Danny was living told him about Heartland Alliance’s program just for homeless youth. For six months Danny lived at the facility in Uptown, getting his life together. “I got so much emotional support [in the program],” Danny says. “I had my ups and downs, but they helped me through. They let you make your own decisions, but there were rules about living here and they gave me guidance and support and I needed that.”
Danny says he had a few different jobs while living at the Uptown building, but he was employed all but five weeks he lived there, saving his money to get his own place. When he was looking for work they paid his bus fare, and he even found his current job at Chipotle on a job board in the main room. “The case manager really helped me out with a lot of stuff,” he says, “how to make plans, how to complete my goals.”
When he had saved enough, Danny moved to his own apartment (although he confesses that for a while, he would bring his laundry back to use their washing machine). Now he lives with a roommate in the South Loop. Today, he’s another young man enjoying life in Chicago, the days when homelessness threatened are past.
“I’m still friends with some of the people I met there,” Danny says. “I see them socially and we talk on Facebook. Everything I got at the program was great, and it was really important for me just to have a place to stay.”
“I decided I needed to live my own life, and I came out of the closet,” Danny says. But to his religious family, that was not okay. Like many LGBT teens, he found himself without a home, a shock for a middle-class kid from Hammond, Indiana. And like many LBGT teens, he was scared. “Some of the older people in the shelters like to prey on the younger people to supply their needs sexually,” he says. “A lot of men hit on me. It didn’t make me feel comfortable.”
A staff member at the transitional shelter where Danny was living told him about Heartland Alliance’s program just for homeless youth. For six months Danny lived at the facility in Uptown, getting his life together. “I got so much emotional support [in the program],” Danny says. “I had my ups and downs, but they helped me through. They let you make your own decisions, but there were rules about living here and they gave me guidance and support and I needed that.”
Danny says he had a few different jobs while living at the Uptown building, but he was employed all but five weeks he lived there, saving his money to get his own place. When he was looking for work they paid his bus fare, and he even found his current job at Chipotle on a job board in the main room. “The case manager really helped me out with a lot of stuff,” he says, “how to make plans, how to complete my goals.”
When he had saved enough, Danny moved to his own apartment (although he confesses that for a while, he would bring his laundry back to use their washing machine). Now he lives with a roommate in the South Loop. Today, he’s another young man enjoying life in Chicago, the days when homelessness threatened are past.
“I’m still friends with some of the people I met there,” Danny says. “I see them socially and we talk on Facebook. Everything I got at the program was great, and it was really important for me just to have a place to stay.”
