An Evening with Carl Siciliano, Author of Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth

Program Type:

Adult Summer Reading, Author Events, Community

Age Group:

Adults
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Event Details

An evening with LGBTQ+ advocate and author, Carl Siciliano, who will discuss his book Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth. Here Siciliano provides an account of how an unhoused queer youth’s murder compelled him to create the nation’s largest housing program for homeless LGBTQ teens.

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. At 19, 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 that exposed the brutality that teenagers like Forney faced in a city marked by gentrification, racist policing and tthe 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. 
 
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Carl Siciliano is a nationally recognized advocate and provider for homeless LGBT youth. He began his career helping to manage shelters, soup kitchens and residential programs for homeless individuals in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Connecticut. His programs have been widely recognized for their quality and innovation. 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 LGBT youth. In 2002, he was named by OUT magazine as one of the 100 Outstanding Gay Achievers. His work was recognized by the Stonewall Democrats of NYC in 2006, and in 2007 he was awarded the Brooke Astor Service Award, which is given to those who are relentless in their dedication to the city of New York and who have contributed substantially to its enrichment. Today Siciliano continues to fight for the rights and empowerment of homeless LGBT youth through the growth and outreach of the Ali Forney Center.

Presented in partnership with Stamford Pride.