It was the summer of 2014, I was sitting in a boardroom with the air condition on and I was inside sweating. It was a blazing hot outside in the summer heat of London.
That day I was waiting for the board meeting of Stonewall housing to start. I had just been recruited as a board member and I felt proud to be part of this amazing organization that was doing great work keeping LGBT* youth off the street and creating shelter for them where they could feel at home.
This particular board meeting was not going to be like any other. The meeting would be discussing the latest findings of a report on homelessness in young people (16-25 years) in the UK, specifically among LGBT* youth.
The report, which came out, was talking about an epidemic of homelessness among young people in the UK. An epidemic the whole country has decided to ignore.
The report was titled "Summary of First Findings: the experiences of LGBTQ young people in England Youth Chances, and surveyed 6,514 young people between the ages 16-25 years. It showed that nearly one in 10 of LGBTQ young people (8%) have had to leave home for reasons relating to their sexuality or gender identity.
While I sat at this meeting, I had a flashback to my time growing up gay in Nigeria and…