Wednesday, February 11, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, February 11, 2015 // The Statement
5B
Editor’s note: Upon request, some names have been altered to
protect the personal safety of sources involved in this article.
D
ETROIT — No one talks about marriage equality at
the Ruth Ellis Center. The idea of bringing it up seems
ethereal, unnecessary in the way a marginal inconve-
nience slinks out of grasp. The reason, as Jessie Fullenkamp,
the Center’s director of mental health services explains, is
straightforward: why concentrate your efforts on making
sure the law recognizes your marital status when, in reality,
it doesn’t even protect your right to work, to live in and rent
property without the constant, overhanging threat of discrimi-
nation?
In Michigan, citizens can be fired or removed from hous-
ing if they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
The state is one of 29 in the country that does not offer civil
rights protections based on sexual orientation. The latest effort
to alter Michigan’s Elliott Larsen Act, which includes other
protections such as gender and race, stalled in committee last
December.
“You can’t arrange your priorities around marriage,” Ful-
lenkamp says. “If you think about it, a lot of the current pro-
LGBTQ rhetoric has been set forward by white, middle class
Americans who, often, don’t consider that there are people out
there completely cut off from their families, living on nothing
because they aren’t straight.”
The Ruth Ellis Center is isolated. It’s big and red and
drenched in a pall that can be only partially attributed to the
abandoned minivan gathering rust across the street. It’s the
biggest, reddest building in the vicinity of the much bigger,
redder fire station just a block away, and, like a worn fortress,
its walls are an expanse of molded brick. On a stretch of iced
Detroit roads, occasionally blemished by the grayish weeds
clambering through scars in the asphalt, the Center looks still.
Dignified. Somehow out of place.
Next to the forgotten SUV and the looming fire house, there’s
a family-owned bakery that seems perpetually drowsy. From
its perch a hundred yards in the opposite direction, a Popeyes
Louisiana Kitchen bathes it all in an empty, neon glare.
The Center looks guarded tonight. The barbed wire crown-
ing its fence stands out. Its doors are clamped shut behind a
hunk of electrical locks, and the string of cars parked around
the block, lengthening with every passing minute, doesn’t
make sense. Neither does the clump of teenagers waiting to be
buzzed in. As one of them — her back now pressed against the
PA system she was talking into moments before — turns to face
the man standing next to her, others swivel around to watch.
Her fingers flutter around like butterflies while she snaps
them, sprinkling down some unknown gauntlet at the man’s
feet. The onlookers await a response. There’s a tense lull.
Before the silence curdles, a smile breaks across the pair’s
face and they grab each other’s forearms, their feet toeing
the ground in synchrony to make a broken circle in the snow.
The PA system’s robotic buzz cuts the celebration short. And
beneath Popeyes’ stare, the small party of teens seems genu-
inely excited about the big, red building getting ready to swal-
low them whole.
“The Ruth Ellis Center’s mission is to work with youth who
are experiencing homelessness and identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender or questioning,” Fullenkamp said. “We
have a residential facility where youth who are in foster care
live with us. We also have a street outreach program. We have
mental health services, where we do both individual or family
work to reaffirm and support LGBTQ identities.”
The name Ruth Ellis comes from an activist who lived in
Detroit for much of her eighty-five years as an out lesbian,
becoming the first woman in Detroit to own a printing busi-
ness and tenaciously advocating for LGBTQ and Black rights.
Her house became a hub of activist fervor in the city, and today
the residence is structured as an Intensive Treatment Unit
set apart from the Center, which is open to any youth seeking
short-term care.
The Center’s residential program, simply labeled “Ruth’s
House,” is for runaway children between the ages of twelve
and seventeen looking for permanent housing immediately
after leaving their families.
These children are in the custody of Michigan’s foster care
system or the juvenile justice system and are referred by the
state’s Department of Human Services, sometimes even out-of-
state care programs
Fullenkamp relays this information with the air of someone
who has repeated it hundreds of times. Having worked at the
Center for four years, she says it with practiced enunciation,
her voice rising and falling as she gauges her audience’s under-
standing of each program.
Part of her job — which often sees her working from early
in the morning to 9:00 p.m., when the facility’s drop-in hours
usually end — requires that she visit local colleges for speaking
engagements. There, she gives long, intensive lectures some-
times about Ruth Ellis, though almost always related to sexual
orientation and gender identity.
This one, at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, is
called “LGBTQ 101,” and is accompanied by a thin sheaf of doc-
uments featuring titles like “Terminology Related to Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People,” “Frequently Asked
Questions about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” and
“The Heterosexual Questionnaire.” On the back of the packet,
there’s a full-page diagram of “The Genderbread Person,” a
ginger-baked representation of sexual fluidity who shepherds
you through varying tiers of Identity, Attraction, Sex and
Expression.
This informality and a lack of urgency feels visible through-
out the presentation. It’s there, towards the end, when Fullen-
kamp makes a joke about having to discuss different forms of
intimacy with different people.
“Anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse, oral intercourse, out-
ercourse — which is an umbrella term for holding hands, kiss-
ing … whenever we do this presentation with high schoolers,”
she riffs, “we end up spending about ten minutes talking about
dry humping. It’s their favorite.”
She gets laughs, and a few minutes later, closes with another
swift pitch about donating to Ruth Ellis. She glides through the
two-hour talk like a seasoned pro, and though always calm, her
demeanor feels vastly different than when she’s counseling at
the Center.
After being buzzed in, the teens ascend the flight of stairs
that welcome them into the main hull of the two-story prem-
ises: a portly reception desk that sits across a row of old looking
couches. Behind the desk, Q. Watkins, a youth outreach coor-
dinator, maintains a running log of the people flowing through
the Center as the night’s drop-in hours officially begin.
Often, the banter between her and some of the other out-
reach coordinators bleeds into more informal conversations
with the youth. This particular night — with forty kids already
filing into the rec room — is especially chaotic. Within the next
hour, the Center will kick off its annual ball — a dance fash-
ioned after an underground LGBTQ practice in which com-
petitors amble down makeshift catwalks or dance floors while
vying for trophies.
Hashing out the night’s food arrangements with another
employee, Watkins rarely stops commenting on the deluge of
activity unfolding around her. Teenagers sift through a large
rack of clothes occupying an entire hallway.
As a tall, lanky guest pulls on a short skirt and loses his
T-shirt for a blouse, Watkins chimes in: “You’re showing a little
nipple there, Adrian.”
When Adrian brandishes two upturned middle fingers and
responds with a wide, arcing pirouette, she claps. Before she
was a member of the staff, Watkins got involved with Ruth
Ellis when her girlfriend at the time was kicked out of her home
after coming out as a lesbian. Initially, her girlfriend moved in
with Watkins and her parents, but facing financial problems
and an inability to support an additional family member, they
decided it would be best to seek help at the Center.
“The rest is history. I went from being a summer intern to an
outreach coordinator,” she says. “And one of most bittersweet
experiences working here has been the ability to see that in
other people. To see these youth when they first come in and
are still there a year later.”
“It can be a humbling experience, knowing that a lot of them
still can’t talk about something as basic as this with their loved
ones.” she adds. “It made me realize how privileged I was to
have affirming parents who actively created an affirming envi-
ronment.”
Excitement bubbles up again when conversation drifts back
to the ball.
“Fifty people already here and it isn’t even five o’clock,” she
says. “I remember in the Halloween ball how most of the youth
became extremely involved with their costumes and it got out
of hand — in a good way. We’ll see what happens tonight.”
The ball has a more functional purpose to go along with its
casually festive premise.
Tonight, while hordes of teenagers shimmy across the
Center’s expansive dance floor to thumping house music,
Fullenkamp quietly picks them off one at a time to conduct
abbreviated meetings in her office. The topic of discussion is
a small survey distributed every two years by the U.S. Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development.
The survey starts with questions like “What are the last four
digits of your social security number?” and gradually probes
for information regarding long-term, problematic relation-
ships and whether or not the subject has experienced domestic
violence. Ultimately, though, the focus turns to housing status.
The goal, Fullenkamp explains, is to determine how much
funding or public housing can be made available by the govern-
ment to those being interviewed. In a phrase, the needier the
person appears on paper, the higher on the queue their name is
placed for any available residence.
“It’s not a catch-all system, but it’s one of the only ways we
have right now to try and get a feel for what’s going on or how
to best meet people where they are,” she says. “A lot of the
youth here might not be literally homeless, sleeping on a park
bench or in the streets right now, but there’s a very good chance
that within the next year they will.”
Based on the data gathered through the survey at the Cen-
ter and most other advocacy centers throughout the city, the
Homeless Action Network of Detroit decides how best to por-
tion lots from public housing projects. The bureaucratic rigma-
role becomes doubly frustrating for non-profits like the Ruth
Ellis Center, considering the lack of attention these govern-
ing agencies devote to the interconnectivity of homeless and
homosexuality in lower-income neighborhoods.
The Center is one of only four organizations in the country
solely dedicated to serving runaway, homeless, at-risk LGBTQ
youth — and the only one in the entire Midwest. Small numbers
give way to marginalization.
“The problem in Detroit is that there are very little resourc-
es for victims of domestic abuse, and fewer still for same-sex
partners who are often experiencing similar problems,” she
continues. “They’re still not recognized, which creates a really
unhealthy atmosphere of isolation that only makes the problem
worse.”
There’s no dedicated source of funding within the $24 mil-
lion pot HAND handles annually for individuals who have
come out as gay. In their yearly State of Homelessness Report,
the organization doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of
LGBTQ individuals.
This shortfall — despite a growing number of reports that
indicate the number of LGBTQ youth on the streets — is
increasing by a sizable margin every year. And in poverty-
stricken, urban areas like Detroit, the epidemic is especially
worrisome. A 2012 study conducted by the Williams Institute
found that between 20 and 40 percent of homeless youths iden-
tify as LGBTQ — double the percentage of adolescents nation-
ally who are openly gay. Further research by the National
Coalition for the Homeless found that homeless LGBTQ ado-
lescents are more than twice as likely to commit suicide as
their heterosexual counterparts.
According to Fullenkamp, the trouble often arises from a
painstakingly stringent verification process. The verifications
are used to weed out applicants, discrediting information given
by people seeking federal vouchers.
“Anybody who’s ever been in a position where they’ve had
to ask for something understands how dehumanizing that pro-
cess can be, and the system is set up to reinforce those feel-
ings,” she says. “At the end of the day, you want people to feel
safe asking for help and you want people who ask for help to
get it.”
“But, you have to have all these verification letters that
demand you to verify that you’re homeless,” she continues. “So
an outreach worker would have to go with you to wherever it is
you’re sleeping and actually see that it exists. Which is crazy,
not only because it’s disrespectful to the individual, but also
because it’s not at all an efficient use of the system’s time and
money.”
The survey distributed this night is a means to find recipients
for 200 recently released federal vouchers, and homeless agen-
cies across town are scrambling to find potential candidates.
Though Fullenkamp insists — with a muted smile — that this
isn’t a competition per se, each agency makes fervent efforts to
advocate for its own clients. Some of the other organizations
conducting surveys tonight include the Neighborhood Service
Organization and the Coalition On Temporary Shelter, both
of whom cater to a predominantly older, heterosexual demo-
graphic.
Eric Stanson is a large man wearing a white, patterned zip-
up fleece and dark jeans. He closes his eyes as he picks up a mic
and keeps them that way when his hands reach down to pull
out the pair of ivory-colored sunglasses from a back pocket.
Some people watch as he puts them on. Stanson is the master
of ceremonies for the night. The mic in his hand, by accident
or careful foresight of those who hold their ear drums dear,
remains off for the next two hours.
Stanson doesn’t need it.
Around the sweeping hardwood dance space that looks more
like a cafeteria than a disco, he prowls. In front of the black
foldable table that holds the store-bought trophies, tonight’s
prizes, he pauses. And through the cacophony of chatter that
LGBTQ youth find community and support at
Detroit’s Ruth Ellis Center
Akshay Seth, Daily Film Columnist
RUBY WALLAU/Daily
LEFT: Ruth Ellis Center workers at the welcome desk. CENTER: A community room at the center. RIGHT: Youth outreach coordinator Jessie Fullenkamp in her office.
See RUTHELLIS, Page 8B