Homeless Youth Trading Sex for Money, Shelter Persists

Homeless young people exchanging sex for money, drugs, or a place to stay are not new in San Francisco, and according to several youth, it's still happening.

Now, however, it may be less obvious. Conversations with nearly a dozen youth over the last couple of months reveal that many apparently work out deals for sex while they're panhandling. They don't seem interested in much of the assistance the city has to offer, and some officials worry what that could mean for their futures.

Outside the Walgreens at 18th and Castro streets late one sunny Sunday afternoon in May, Jacob Davis, 21, sat next to his twin brother, Daniel, who was holding a sign and asking for money. The scores of people passing by largely ignored them.

Jacob Davis recognized that a reporter's question was about selling sex before it was even asked. He said he has sex with people "if the pay is right. ... Half the time, they just want to suck my dick."

Davis, who had shaggy hair and was wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket, said he considers himself bisexual or "gay for pay," but when he's not being paid, he identifies as straight.

"If someone's offering $100 to suck your dick, it doesn't sound that gay," he said.

Such solicitations happen a couple times a week, both in the Castro and Haight neighborhoods, where the brothers sleep in storefronts, he said.

Davis, who's from Hollywood and has been in San Francisco with his brother for two months, said the proposals don't really make him nervous.

"It is what it is," he said. "Survival."

The propositions, which Davis said always come from men, can also include drugs like methamphetamine and heroin, which he's accepted, as well as a place to stay. He said he always insists on using condoms.

Toward the end of the interview, Davis came up with the idea of having sex with the reporter for $100. The reporter declined.

Daniel Davis, who's gay, declined to be interviewed, because he was focused on making money.

At about 12:30 a.m. last Friday, Addison Vigil, 20, sat in a grassy patch at United Nations Plaza, two miles away from the Castro. Next to him, about a dozen people were sleeping as workers hosed down the popular plaza.

The alcohol and drugs he said that he uses hadn't totally worn down Vigil's good looks.

He said getting approached for sex is "the name of the game, especially if you're young and you look decent." He said when he's in the Castro, it happens "two or three times a day." Around UN Plaza, though, it doesn't happen very often.

'Ordering in'

Vigil, who identifies as pansexual, said men and women, young and old, with money and without, have propositioned him. He said he accepts offers of money and other favors in exchange for sex "depending on how fucked up I am."

He considers exchanging sex for money or other compensation prostitution.

"No matter how you fucking put it, it's the same act," he said.

Captain Denise Flaherty, who heads the San Francisco Police Department's special victims unit, said that under the letter of the law, trading sex for money or similar favors is prostitution.

However, Flaherty said that police look at prostitution more as "victim-centered" crime than suspect-centered. She said that in incidents involving homeless youth, "clearly, in that situation, that person is a victim" who's being taken advantage of, and police want to help people caught up in prostitution get services.

Flaherty, who recently assumed her current post, indicated that she wasn't aware of any arrests for such incidents.

Peter Thoshinsky, who recently became the SFPD's first out gay male lieutenant, has been with the department for 30 years. Among other roles, he's worked in Southern Station, which includes South of Market and other neighborhoods.

In an email exchange about youth trading sex for money and other forms of payment, Thoshinsky referred to a term that's used by advocates for young people.

"You can give it a politically correct name, 'survival sex,' but the motivation is the same it has always been. They're prostitutes," he said. "It's an ugly word, but it's the truth."

Thoshinsky said, "I have never heard anyone admit they brought someone home for sex, but reading between the lines you can usually figure things out."

Examples are when police respond to a domestic dispute call from a neighbor who hears yelling, or there's a "speed" overdose, or an "unwanted guest call" when the resident wants the younger man to leave, he said.

He said that when he sees "an older 'obviously gay' guy with a younger guy there always seems to be meth involved and there is never an explanation for how the person got to be in their apartment except for 'He's a guy I met and he needed somewhere to stay and I felt like helping him.'"

The "motivation is pretty transparent" and involves trading something - Thoshinsky suspects cash and meth or heroin, as well as a place to stay - for sex.

"You don't see younger boys ... turning tricks" anymore, he said, which was "prevalent on Polk Street in the 1980s."

"I haven't seen that sort of thing in years," Thoshinsky said.

Sergeant Chuck Limbert, the LGBT liaison for SFPD's Mission Station, which oversees the Castro and other neighborhoods, has seen changes, too.

Men used to cruise the Castro's Collingwood Park area for boys in their teens, he said, but police enforcement helped stop that. Another development in recent years has been online hookup sites where people can quickly meet others for sex.

"It's so easy now to obtain sex," Limbert said. "You don t have to go out looking for it. You order it in."

Limbert noted if the youth are at least 18, the acts are considered consensual.

"They have the ability to say 'No,' and if they feel they're being pressured in any way, we want to know about that," Limbert said. He indicated that he wasn't aware of any such reports to the police.

Lack of interest in services

Local nonprofits often portray the services they provide to youth as crucial, but several young people seemed only moderately interested in the programs that are available. (Many also said they intended to be moving on from the city soon.)

Asked if he thinks that there needs to be more services in the city, Vigil said, "More feeds," where people bring around food, "would be nice."

He said he doesn't stay in homeless shelters because he's "not a people person."

Even if young people living on the city's streets aren't that interested in more programs, some city officials are concerned about them.

"Some of our homeless have a very strong mindset in regards to the fact that they don't want services," Limbert said. "They just want to be free to do what they want to do."

He worries that if more programs aren't offered, more young people will end up needing help.

"I think that's our future," he said. "If we don't provide services for them we're going to end up with large groups that are going to be dependent on us in the future."

Longtime city leader Bevan Dufty, who noted that youth exchanging sex for money and other things isn't new, expressed concern, too

Dufty, who's gay, represented the Castro and other District 8 neighborhoods for eight years on the Board of Supervisors. He now oversees Mayor Ed Lee's homeless policies as the director of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships, and Engagement.

In a recent interview, he recalled a meeting in 2000, when he worked in the city's neighborhood services office, that drew more than 100 people and involved discussion of providing services to youth.

"Angry things were said about the problems that would take place in the neighborhood" from having youth around, he said.

One young person raised his hand and said, "Many people have spoken and said very mean-spirited things about us and about us being trash in the neighborhood, and I just want to say two of the speakers that said these things have had sex with me for money and drugs," Dufty said.

The room went "pitch silent. ... It's an unforgettable moment for me," he said.

Dufty said services such as those provided by Larkin Street Youth Services, a local nonprofit that offers housing assistance and other programs, are needed for transitional-age youth.

"These are just essential building blocks to ensure that young people are not being exploited and that we're helping them to be self-sufficient," he said.

He added, "Someone may say, 'Oh, I'm okay,' because they've deadened themselves with substance use, but at the end of the road you're going to have to address the trauma people feel in that situation," Dufty said. "... A young adult may not see it in themselves until further down the road."

Late on a recent Friday night, Tyler Deitrick, 21, was sitting outside Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, at 18th and Diamond streets in the Castro. He wore a limp Mohawk and a Space Invaders-patterned jacket. About six other people were camped out nearby.

Deitrick said that when he was 15, he got kicked out of the house for being gay. He'd been staying in the Castro for eight months.

He said people have approached him and offered a place to stay and take a shower, but he said he rejects the offers because he can sense what's coming, even if they don't mention sex.

"I don't do that shit because most people, they expect things in return," Deitrick said. For him, it's a moral issue, and a matter of self-respect, he said.

Deitrick said, "I fly a sign, usually" that says, "Anything green helps," referring to marijuana and money. He said he gets offers of methamphetamine and other drugs and accepts them as long as nothing is expected in return.

Deitrick, who said he'd been seeking work, goes to Most Holy Redeemer on Wednesday nights for dinner, but he wasn't looking for more services.

He was once incarcerated for a marijuana-related offense, and he said, "I won't go to a shelter because it reminds me of jail, and I don't like being told what to do."