Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth

From a pioneering advocate for LGBTQ youth, a gripping, impassioned account of how an unhoused queer youth’s murder compelled him to create the nation’s largest housing program for homeless LGBTQ teens.

“A gut-wrenchingly poignant real-life saga . . . Carl Siciliano has written an unputdownable account of what it looks like when compassion is harnessed to funding and policy.”—Tim Murphy, author of Christodora and Speech Team

ONE OF CNN’S ESSENTIAL READS FOR PRIDE MONTH AND BEYOND

What power does a long-disenfranchised community hold to transform the treatment of its most abused members? How can we locate that power?

Carl Siciliano met Ali Forney—a Black nonbinary teenager known for fierce loyalty to friends and an unshakeable faith that “my God will love me for who I am”—in 1994 while working at a daytime center for homeless youth in New York City. Nineteen years old, Forney was one of thousands Siciliano encountered who had been driven from their homes by rejecting families, forced to struggle in the streets due to homophobic and transphobic violence in the shelters.

Then Forney was murdered, a moment of horror and devastation that exposed the brutality that teenagers like Forney faced in a city marked by gentrification, racist policing, and the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic. Anguished by Forney’s loss, Siciliano fought to create homes where unhoused queer teens could live safely, with their human dignity at last affirmed, while he helped lead a movement that compelled New York City to invest millions of dollars in kids who’d been ignored for decades.

Siciliano writes with loving affection for Forney and many other queer teens, showing deep respect for their wisdom, courage, and spiritual integrity. Their stories illuminate the harsh realities faced by hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ youths suffering from homelessness across our nation. And, exposing the political and religious forces that continue to endanger LGBTQ youths, he makes a clarion call for their protection.

Written with heart and profound insight, Making Room is a landmark personal narrative, bringing to life an untold chapter of LGBTQ history and testifying to the power of community, solidarity, and the human spirit.

Carl Siciliano is a nationally recognized advocate and provider for homeless LGBTQ youth. In 2002, Siciliano founded the Ali Forney Center (AFC), which has grown to become the nation’s largest and most comprehensive housing program for homeless LGBTQ youth. His work has been featured by NPR, CNN, The Daily Show, and New York magazine. His writing has appeared in HuffPost, The Advocate, and The New York Times.