A clearerfuture
These LGBTQ homeless youthare getting free glasses.It could change their lives.
by Katie Dupere
A clearerfuture
These LGBTQ homeless youthare getting free glasses.It could change their lives.
by Katie Dupere
When Clay Ferguson was jumped in a New York City coffee shop, his attackers stole his phone, his ID and his money. Then, they broke his glasses.
Two weeks later, Clay is still jittery, blinking frantically as he looks anywhere but at me. As he recounts the night, he visibly winces at the sting of the memory.
“Horrible,” the 23-year-old whispers. “It’s been horrible.”
Alongside the trauma are the logistics: replacing his valuables and getting new glasses. It would be a tough situation for anyone, but the process is even more complicated for Clay.
Clay is homeless.
For homeless populations, improving eyesight is rarely a priority, mainly due to cost. More pressing necessities — like a place to stay, food and personal hygiene — often push frames and lenses to the backburner. But the right to sight is essential for those with unstable housing and income, especially youth trying to pull themselves out of hardship.
The ChildSight program, a branch of Helen Keller International, provides free glasses to underserved youth in need. Though the program has historically served children from low-income public schools, the initiative branched out in July 2015 to work with the Ali Forney Center, a Harlem-based LGBTQ youth homeless shelter. With housing options scattered throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, the center served 1,400 young people last year and directly housed 440 of them — including Clay.
“We’re really interested in finding other populations that are vulnerable and have difficulties accessing health services,” Nick Kourgialis, vice president of eye health at Helen Keller International, tells Mashable. “Certainly this is a population that faces these challenges.”
Homelessness is an epidemic within the LGBTQ community, with an estimated 40% of homeless youth identifying as part of the queer community. The statistic is staggering, especially since research suggests under 4% of the general population — not just youth — identify as LGBTQ.
The Ali Forney Center was founded in June 2002 in response to the LGBTQ youth homelessness crisis in New York City, serving as a way to preserve the memory of the center’s namesake. Ali Forney was a homeless, gender-nonconforming teen who became homeless at age 13, engaging in sex work in order to survive. Afraid of sexuality- and gender-based violence in city shelters, he slept and worked on the streets of Harlem. Forney was murdered there in December 1997. He was 22.
More than 80% of the young people the Ali Forney Center sees are kicked out of their home after coming out, a trend that extends nationwide. The top five reasons LGBTQ youth nationwide become homeless are running away due to family rejection, being forced out of their home by unaccepting family, fleeing severe abuse, aging out of the foster care system and escaping family neglect.
Young people browse through potential frames at the Ali Forney Center’s ChildSight vision screening on March 16, 2016. Of the 17 youth screened, all but three failed their eye exams.
The majority of Ali Forney youth referred to ChildSight vision screenings, which take place every couple of months at the center’s main drop-in location in Harlem, haven’t worn glasses for years. For them, blurry vision has just become a new normal.
“When you are young, you see the world the way you see it and assume everyone else sees it the same way,” Kourgialis says. “But when someone puts lenses before their eyes, the look on these kids’ faces is like, ‘What the hell?'”
In the mere 10 months ChildSight has been working with the Ali Forney Center, the group has examined 122 young people. The program has delivered 88 pairs of free eyeglasses to those who otherwise wouldn’t have access to improved sight.
At one of these screenings in late March, technicians from ChildSight examined 17 young people, including Clay. All but three of them failed their eye tests.
Clay Ferguson, 23, attempts to read a line on the vision start without glasses. He can only see the big “E” at the top.
When Clay places one hand over his right eye at the clinic, he can’t see past the big “E” at the top of the eye chart. Switching to cover his left eye yields the same results. Aside from that lone “E,” everything else is blurred. He fails his screening.
Clay grew up in Brooklyn, and eventually entered the foster care system at a young age. But his living situation soon changed dramatically when his foster family could no longer afford to keep him in their home when he aged out of the system at 21. Clay was left homeless.
But, he specifies, he’s now trying to get to a better place. He works as a telemarketer at a New York City hotel, a job he started just a couple weeks before he was attacked. He likes it, especially because it pays weekly, which makes it easier to have a stable income.
For most of his life, Clay has had access to glasses on and off, only going without them for a couple of months at a time when his frames were misplaced or broken and money was tight. But since the attack, he’s been struggling to see, squinting to read street signs and fumbling his way through the city at night.
In lieu of a stable place to stay, Clay often sleeps on gym-like mats at the Ali Forney Center as part of the center’s drop-in hours for homeless LGBTQ youth. But after losing his glasses, he’s been missing the 8 p.m. drop-in cutoff because he can’t see where he’s going after sundown, and he doesn’t have a phone to help him keep track of time.
“Yesterday, they were telling me to hurry up. You can’t tell me to hurry up if I can’t see it,” he says, the frustration rising in his voice. “I can’t see the street signs. I can’t barely see nothin’.”
Clay Ferguson browses through glasses after his vision screening.
If Clay doesn’t make drop-in hours, he risks staying in a mass intake city shelter — spaces that often have a concerning reputation for the LGBTQ community. The young people the center serves say they often feel unsafe or unwelcome in those shelters due to their sexuality or gender, fearing violence and bias.
“Just because the city says that anyone over the age of 18 has the right to shelter does not mean that a 20-year-old who is trans or gender-nonconforming, or a very effeminate gay boy, feels safe going into a very large warehouse-setting shelter where housing is based on your gender,” says Nicole Giannone, director of program evaluation, training and advocacy at Ali Forney.
“For LGBT youth, they’re kind of like, ‘Well, where the fuck am I going to go? Where am I going to go that is going to respect me and my identity?'”
At Ali Forney, housing and support services — case management, educational support, health services and legal services — have always been staples. But eye health is something relatively new.
“This is a problem, and you can solve it quite easily,” Kourgialis says. “It’s a simple fix, but it’s going to make a big difference in their lives.”
When Jonathan Belair, 21, shows his glasses to the technicians from ChildSight, they immediately understand why he hasn’t worn the frames for six months. The lenses are so marred with scratches that he can’t even see out of them.
Jonathan, who lives in the basement of a Queens church through Ali Forney’s housing program, has been stuck between two options: wearing the scratched lenses or not wearing glasses at all. More often than not, he chooses the latter.
“The biggest struggle is when you’re squinting,” he says. “People think you’re angry or confused. They’re like, ‘Why are you squinting?’ People always say that to me.”
“I’m also getting wrinkles,” he adds with a smile.
A ChildSight doctor tests Jonathan Belair’s vision by holding up lenses to figure out what his prescription should be.
Placing his glasses aside, the technician asks Jonathan to look at the eye chart across the room and read the first line he can see. Jonathan can’t read any of them, not even the large, bold “E” at the top.
“I couldn’t tell if it was an ‘E’ or a ‘C,'” he says.
Not only does Jonathan fail his vision test, but his vision is less than 20/200. In other words, what a person with “normal vision” can see at 200 feet away without squinting, Jonathan can’t even make out from 20 feet away.
While he is on Medicaid, which helps cover some of the costs of an eye exam and eyeglasses, Jonathan says finding a provider is complicated and time-consuming. Plus, spending any money on health care means losing money he could otherwise save, which would allow him to have more stability and independence in the future.
Though low-cost health care options like Medicaid are a possibility for the homeless population, gaining access to those services requires a series of logistical hoops, paperwork and time. Many providers also have a limited number of Medicaid patients they serve, which makes locating a doctor who takes low-income patients in a city like New York frustrating, if not seemingly impossible.
Kourgialis says that although the Affordable Care Act broadened health care access, the system is overwhelmed. And that leaves it relatively inaccessible to homeless populations in search of care.
“In trying to develop the program, we are trying to remove all the barriers we can,” he says. “You know? Let’s bring all the services to them rather than asking them to come to us — because it just doesn’t happen.”
Shannel Stedford, 21, faced these barriers first as an undocumented immigrant and now as a homeless youth, often deciding it wasn’t worth the struggle for the care. She recently lost her glasses — frames she received about four months ago through the ChildSight program. Prior to that, she went almost three years without glasses.
“I wasn’t a citizen when I found out about this,” she says. “I felt really good because I didn’t have to pay for nothing. And my prescriptions cost like $600 because I have a bad astigmatism.”
Like Jonathan, Shannel can’t see the single bold “E” at the top of a vision chart. With vision so poor, losing her glasses has been understandably rough. But ChildSight will replace her misplaced pair for free through its clinic’s services.
Shannel, who received her green card in March with support from the Ali Forney Center and legal group Urban Justice, was born in Jamaica, immigrating to New York City at age three. But after she came out to her mother when she was a teenager, she became homeless.
“I used to live with my mom, but she’s homophobic,” she says. “And I like women, so I had to leave.”
Shannel currently lives in an apartment in a Brooklyn neighborhood through Ali Forney’s housing program. She likes having her own room, a luxury she hasn’t had for a long time.
“It’s a really nice neighborhood, so you feel rich — for a second,” she says. “Then you have to remember, it’s not mine.”
That’s part of the problem with services or charity directed toward people in need. Generally, people who are homeless are expected to accept these services, but often get little or no say in what that looks like. Autonomy of choice, along with possessions that are entirely yours, is a rarity — and that’s something ChildSight was especially aware of when designing this partnership with the Ali Forney Center.
An essential part of the program is granting choice, letting youth choose their own frames from a selection of about 40 styles. The frames, which are manufactured by EAG Lab Group in Mount Vernon, New York, usually take two weeks to be delivered into the hands of the young person who needs them.
An EAG technician pops lenses in glasses to be delivered to the young people at the Ali Forney Center.
A machine measures frames so technicians know how to cut and shape the prescription lenses.
An EAG technician washes lenses before inserting them into frames.
Points marked on lenses provide guidance when filling the prescription.
In the end, the young people aren’t only getting glasses, but they are also getting a sort of freedom that’s often denied to them. Kourgialis says that is crucial to the program’s success.
“If we invest all this time to come here and provide the service, we want them to feel good about it,” he says.
Danielle Wardlaw, 24, looks out the window at a busy New York scene after trying on her new glasses.
Danielle Wardlaw’s excitement is electric when she picks up her glasses a week after her exam. The 24-year-old whips her head around the small conference room at Ali Forney. The room, paneled with windows on two sides, looks out onto a busy Harlem street.
“I can see that sign from here,” Danielle says, pointing toward a street sign a block away. “Morningside Avenue. This is crazy.”
She swings around quickly to look at the eye chart at the opposite side of the room. She starts reading the last line without being prompted — no stumbling, no squinting.
“P-E-Z-O-L-C-F-T-D,” she says happily, singing the string of letters. “I have never seen that line in my life. Usually, I only get to line three or four.”
Danielle’s excitement doesn’t fade even as she leaves the room. She has to go to class at a local college Ali Forney previously helped her apply to. Her college professor, she says, is going to be thrilled. She won’t be bugging him to read notes off the board anymore.
Soon after she leaves, Clay enters the room. The doctor hands him his new glasses — simple black frames, rectangular in shape with slightly rounded edges.
Clay puts them on and smiles, immediately darting his eyes to the bustling street outside. His eyes widen as he scans the busy scene. It’s the same street he’s been fumbling around late at night, trying to make it to drop-in hours on time. Only now he can see the people, the street signs, the walk signals.
The ChildSight doctor asks him how the frames feel.
“It feels good,” he says, still grinning.
Clay Ferguson looks out the window at the Ali Forney Center, scanning a street he previously fumbled around late at night without a prescription.
The doctor asks Clay to stand at the other side of the room to test out his vision. When he looks at the eye chart, his doesn’t squint. Instead, his eyes widen with excitement.
The doctor asks how far he can read down. “I can read all of them,” he responds.
“Even the bottom one?”
Another ChildSight worker points to the sign, and says, partially in disbelief, “You can read this one?”
“Yep,” Clay says.
As if to dare him, the doctor says, “Read it.”
“P-E-Z-O-L-C-R-T-D,” he says, swiftly and confidently. He’s only one letter off.
Katie Dupere
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