A place to belong: An emerging model for 2SLGBTQ+ youth housing

Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, and other sexual and gender diverse (2SLGBTQ+) youth experience disproportionate rates of homelessness and face significant barriers when accessing mainstream housing services, including discrimination, inadequate staff training, and program designs that fail to affirm their identities. While 2SLGBTQ+ youth housing programs have emerged in response, limited theoretical frameworks exist to guide their development and implementation. This study employed a participatory realist evaluation to identify the context-mechanism-outcome configurations (CMOcs) that enable affirming housing programs to promote safety, belonging, and independence for 2SLGBTQ+ youth. Through an environmental scan of housing programs across North America and an in-depth case study of Pride Home, a community-driven, long-term housing program in a mid-size Canadian city–we developed twelve interconnected CMOcs. Our findings demonstrate that effective 2SLGBTQ+ youth housing operates through a Relational Belonging Model in which structural design, staffing, and youth agency work together to interrupt cycles of marginalization and exclusion. This realist account provides a theoretically grounded framework for designing, implementing, and evaluating 2SLGBTQ+ affirming housing initiatives across diverse contexts.