Cornelius Wiggins (Mikos Light) on community needs assessment and LGBTQ+ youth
Cornelius Wiggins of Mikos Light, formerly a homeless queer youth himself, presents findings from five community needs assessments of 650+ surveys showing 80% of respondents identified as trans/gender nonconforming, 67% hadn't felt safe in a while, and housing resources rated 3 out of 10. He calls for a comprehensive citywide needs assessment, stronger peer navigation, and accountability for outcomes beyond just providing beds.
Good afternoon.
My name is Cornelius Wiggins, and I'm the founder of Mikos Light.
And I spent more than 25 years working with homeless and runaway youth, particularly LGBT young people, young people of color, and young people navigating multiple systems.
But before I ever worked in this field, I was one of those young people.
I came to New York in 1999 as a homeless queer youth.
I know what it feels like to enter systems when you are scared, when you don't know who to trust, and when the difference between one caring adult and one bad interaction can determine whether if you stay at a service or walk away.
These experiences why I dedicated so much of my life to this work.
Between 2021 and 2025, I helped conduct five community needs assessment with homeless and unstably housed youth all over New York City.
Across the work, we collected more than 650 surveys, held 15 focus groups, and conducted 30 individual interviews.
And young people told us very clearly what they were experiencing.
In 2024, assessment of 214 young people, 80% identified as transgendered or nonconforming, gender nonconforming, 59% identified as black, 43% reported experience street homelessness,
67% said that they haven't felt safe in a while.
Young people talked about
harassment and programs, talked about misgendering, talked about unsanitary conditions.
They talked about retaliations after reporting problems.
They talked about shelters roles that sometimes made it harder to maintain employment, education, appointments, relationships, and recovery.
And when we asked young people to rate housing resources, the average rate was three out of 10.
These numbers should make us ask bigger questions.
Are we measuring success by whether we give a young person a bed or whether that young person actually makes it into safe permanent housing?
Because a bed is important, but it is not an outcome.
And New York City currently funds a lot of programs, and those investments matter.
But we should have to look at what happens inside those programs and what happens after shelter.
Are programs adequately staffed?
Are they receiving meaningful LGBTQ plus and trans and gender nonconforming competencies trainings?
Not just one hour training once a year, but ongoing support and accountability.
When a young person reports harassment or mistreatment, what happens next?
How long does a young person wait for housing navigators?
How many young people leave shelters for permanent housing and how many of them simply disappear from the system?
And do we even have enough data to answer those questions?
That brings me to my big request.
New York City needs a comprehensive...
citywide community needs assessment of homeless and runaway youth.
We need to ask young people directly what is working and what is not.
We should collect information about LGBTQ identities, gender, race, disabilities, immigration,
and migration experience, parenting situations, involvement with foster care and justice systems where young people are arriving from barriers to housing experience and shelters and what happens to them after they leave.
And young people with lived experience should be involved in designing the questions, collecting the information, and interpreting the results and the decisions that happens next.
We should continue to strengthen peer navigation and housing navigators.
I watch young people respond differently when the person across from them understands something about what they've lived through.
And the city should move with expanding real estate.
Relative to existing eligibility to runaway and homeless youth.
We need to make sure that young people can access these pathways, not just on paper.
Finally, I just wanted to remind, just remember some things that sometimes get lost when we talk about systems and budgets.
These are young people.
They are trying to finish school.
They're trying to work.
They are trying to build relationships.
They are trying to figure out who they are while also trying to survive.
I was once one of those young people.
And people invest in it.
than me when there was absolutely no proof that the investment would pay off.
And because they did, I spent most of my life investing in other young people who came after me.
New York City has the opportunity to build a runaway and homeless youth system that does more than just manage homelessness.
We can build a system that listens to young people, protects them while they are in our care, gives them workers the resources they need to
create real pathways to housing and hold themselves accountable for what happens to young people after they walk through our doors.
Thank you.