I hope my previous post didn't give a false impression of New York City's very real homeless youth crisis.
These statistics from a suppressed 1997 study commissioned by the office of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani paint a very different picture from the one presented by Vince:
From
http://www.villagevoice.com/features/9933/kihara.shtml
* The study cites estimates of "15,000 to 20,000 homeless youth in New York City." But "the current system of 191 beds in emergency settings, and 317 beds in transitional settings, provide only a fraction of the number necessary to house all youth in need of shelter."
* More than half of New York's homeless kids under 21 are from the city's own low-income neighborhoods and nearly two-thirds are black or Latino.
* More than a third of 432 street youth surveyed earned money through prostitution. More than half of the young people interviewed considered it " 'somewhat likely or very likely' that they would get AIDS."
* Many programs for homeless teens are ill-equipped to handle the variety of problems they face: "Of the 16 residential programs listed in a directory of NYC adolescent drug treatment programs, 9 could not accept a pregnant youth, 11 a MICA 'medically ill chemical abuser,' 14 a suicidal youth, 10 a violent one, and 8 a cross-dresser. Many street-dependent youth can fall into at least one of these categories."
* Foster care, overseen by the city's Administration for Children's
Services, "is often the first and only housing option for thousands ofyouth who become homeless as a result of family-wide homelessness, deaths of parents, or parental abuse or neglect." But "ACS has closed nearly 400 group home beds since 1995, resulting in a severe shortage of available beds, especially for teenagers entering the system."