1. The majority of street-involved queer youth take to the streets initially because of family breakdowns and/abuse. When family support breaks down, fewer services and support are available to sexual minority youth in comparison with those available to heterosexually identified youth.
2. Unsupported youth, being particularly vulnerable to harm, are placed in the greatest dependancy upon the state, yet they are also the group most likely to be overlooked in “social safety-net” provisions.
3. In terms of institutionally provided support for this most vulnerable group, least tolerated means most overlooked. Accordingly, in relation to social service provision, the most overlooked populations among sexual minority youth are likely to be aboriginal and “of colour” transgendered youth, those located at the furthest edges of the race/gender hierarchy whose normative order governs our daily lives.
   “We’re still not accepted, people just ignore the fact that we exist, they’re not accepting us, they just ignore the fact that we exist…” (Jay)
4. Societal and institutionally entrenched, sexual ideologies and orthodoxies, imposed on as well as internalized by schools and community service providers, whether heterosexual or “LGBT”, function together to undermine efforts at effective provision of support and service for youth. Routinely, policies, procedures, and workers themselves operate in complete disregard of sexuality as an issue for youth, at best silencing the matter, at worse, prohibiting it.
   “Why can’t people accept differences? Why the fear? Why the obsession with labels?” (Survey#42)
5. Community-based supports and services are few and hugely underfunded, and youth services sponsored and run by LGBT adult community members suffer from the same predation problems, actual and attributed, that heterosexual youth clubs, organizations and churches do. In multiple ways, this project found, for sexual minority youth, starting with their own parents and family, places of greatest refuge become the places of greatest danger. In many ways, because of adults’ exploitation of youth, because of the kinds of places there are to “be queer and be safe”, as one woman put it, seems to be most often where it’s most dangerous for queer youth to be, and this significantly includes drug and alcohol exposure. So far, bars and parks and after hours clubs have been among the few places LGBT adults have devised for keeping an always besieged culture active and visible.
6. With queer identities always on our societal “prohibited list”, there are few places where youth can be and fewer yet where they can be safe. Greatly intensified in the case of the LGBT community, therefore, is the responsibility adults have to make safe and supportive space in queer culture for youth, given that LGBT youth often have no where else to go when they discover the ways shelters, doctors, detox centers, foster homes and jobs available to other young people end up being denied to them.
7. Youth see themselves as agents in their own lives whenever that has been possible for them.
   “We don’t let young people grow up in our community.”
   (Colleen, Youth Shelter Worker)
   They assert their need for agency, and in terms of dedicated housing, they stress the importance of privacy, non-judgmental support, and a real say in how the house or building is run. They are, after all, already agents in their own lives, in part because they have “chosen” to live on the street, they “choose” their friends, decide their own hours, activities and sexualities.
8. All participants were in agreement that youth trying to quit drugs and/or alcohol should not be housed with youth who were actively abusing these substances. Despite the unfortunate “all-or-nothing” wording of our survey, which produced an evident preference for a “drug-free house”, in the full-length face to face interviews a policy of inclusive, supportive and non-judgmental harm reduction was the clear majority preference, and, in interviews, some respondents directly challenged the view that complete prohibitions on substance use could or would be an effective “house rule”.
9. Gender and economic conditions appear inseparable. So among street-involved youth, and specifically those involved in sex work, young men working the streets, many of whom self-identify as heterosexual, appear to have greater freedom, greater material resources, and better prospects than young women, likely due in large part to the fact that their clientele are male, men buy sex much more often, and men in this country are better off financially as a group than women.
   If you could say one thing to Johns, what would you tell them?
   “You don’t purchase a life…For God’s sake you never purchase a life for any period of time, you just don’t. A life is its own life …and that’s what I’d tell them basically, you don’t buy life. You know. I hope I said that right.” (Taz)
   Among the young women we interviewed, a majority self-identified as bisexual, citing queer self- identification as ‘dangerous’. Not surprisingly, lesbians are the least visible sexual minority group among street-involved youth. youth are most visible, and most likely to take up transgendered identifications. It would appear that a sexual economy regulates both of these identity positionings, and requires ambiguity with respect to one’s own sexuality. Correspondingly, the affirmation of any particular sexual identity is a right with a price tag, and we found it was the youth with greatest economic means who were most likely to unambiguously self-identify as queer or gay/lesbian.
   
10. A house divided into dedicated “floors” or “wings” would be essential to serving the different needs of differently positioned youth. This was the strong recommendation by all groups. Discrimination of many, often intersecting kinds, punctuates street-life, rupturing relations of solidarity among disenfranchised youth themselves, as well as being interwoven in the fabric of a persistently gender-differentiated social service provision. In terms of housing, therefore, both the determination of housing need and the determination of housing structure must take this social fragmentation seriously into account. The idea of “a room of one’s own” was very passionately endorsed by all, and it is quite clear that privacy is greatly valued. Although many respondents spoke of their desire to “mix” with others, all stressed that differences between and among sexual minority groups made needs and desires and attitudes very different among the many different groups of “sexual minority” youth, and echoed warnings about incompatibilities, discomfort and even hostilities between and among groups who might seem all to be encompassed by the broad umbrella term, “queer”.

By way of conclusion, rather than leave readers of this report with the kind of closure that the researcher contrives for it, we turn, instead, to the eloquent openings offered by the participants’ own words.