Cyndi Lauper Just Wants to Give LGBT Youth a Home

by Maia Spotts · 2010-04-09 06:25:00 UTC
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Money changes everything. Especially when you're a down and out LGBT kid who's been kicked out the house, bounced from temporary shelter to temporary shelter, and need to find some digs to call your own. And especially if you live in New York City, metropolitan delight and capital of overpriced rentals.

Considering her enveloping embrace of the LGBT community, and her devout commitment to LGBT youth, Cyndi Lauper indeed Gives a Damn. In response to an increasing number of LGBT youth on the streets — they make up a startling 40% of Manhattan's homeless youth — Lauper, along with Lisa Barbaris, and Colleen Jackson, executive director of the West End Intergenerational Residence, is doing something unprecedented. She's opening True Colors Residence, the first permanent, low-income housing opportunity for LGBT youth in Manhattan. (Currently, only temporary housing, at amazing places like The Ali Forney Center, is available for LGBTQ youths in the five boroughs.) The residence, which will be built on W. 154th Street near Frederick Douglas Boulevard, will include 30 studio apartments, a community room and a computer lab.

Residents will be LGBT youth between the ages of 18 and 24, with a history of homelessness. They will sign a one-year, Section 8 lease with rent scheduled according to income. The building, which is estimated to cost $11 million to build, is being funded by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, with additional funds from several city, state and corporate sources. It is slated to open in the winter of 2011.

Lauper has already made news with her True Colors tour, her Give a Damn campaign, her participation with the r Family Cruises, and years upon years of being a righteous straight ally. This building, it seems, is an obvious next step in her quest — a place that LGBT youth can call home, where they can thrive amongst their peers and have access to beneficial resources. In the end, that's all they really want. (Some fuu-uu-uu-uun.)

“We need to make sure we’re taking care of them," says Lauper. "This is the next generation of the LGBT community." So, to the LGBT world, Cyndi says, if you're lost you can look and you will find her. And Cyndi Lauper, that's why I love you.

(And now I've officially surpassed Michael Jones in the "How many times can you quote Cyndi Lauper songs in a post about Cyndi Lauper" competition.)

Photo credit: Bastique at Wikimedia Commons

Maia Spotts is one part of a two mom, two kid household and hopes to change the way in which this country defines the strong American family.
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