Help LGBTQ+ Youth Find Housing by Attending the PVD House Gala
The Precious Gems gala will raise money for providing emergency housing and small business spaces specifically tailored to the LGBTQ+ community.
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The housing crisis has been brought to light by many major local media outlets, from the Boston Globe and Providence Journal to WPRI 12’s Target 12 Housing Crisis Special and Rhode Island Monthly, but the story that hasn’t fully been told is that there are many displaced LGBTQ+ youth who have been denied a place to live due to their gender identity or sexual orientation. The LGBTQ+ community experiences a higher rate of homelessness as well as a lack of accessible mental health resources, and PVD House aims to be a resource to alleviate those stressors. According to the Trevor Project, 28 percent of LGBTQ youth reported experiencing homelessness or housing instability at some point in their lives — and those who did had two to four times the odds of reporting depression, anxiety, self-harm, considering suicide and attempting suicide compared to those with stable housing.
PVD House hopes to provide both housing and therapy programs for the local LGBTQ+ community. The organization is working with the Trans-Formative Farm in Foster to offer both cooperative farming solutions to address food insecurity in the queer community and a dance therapy program, to kick off in spring 2024. Currently, they are working to leverage grant funding to secure their own building in Providence that will provide emergency housing solutions, including micro houses and RV shelter.
The Precious Gems Gala will raise funds to help support this mission. The event takes place on Thursday, April 11 from 5:30-9 p.m. at the Met at Hope Artiste Village at 1005 Main St. in Pawtucket. The party features live music, a cocktail hour, drag performances by Blacc Brandi and Danuel Duel, who are hosting the event alongside Salon Bianco owner and PVD House founder Betha Wood. The dress code is creative casual and tickets can be purchased here. Use the code JAMIE50 to save 50 percent.
PVD House is also partnering with What Cheer Flower Farm in Providence to offer a music therapy program in late spring 2024, which will offer bi-weekly music training and therapy, facilitated by trained music therapists and local musicians for PVD House’s clients. These programs will continue in the new space.
“PVD House is a sustainable solution to emergency housing,” says PVD House founder Betha Wood. “When supported by affordable housing and small businesses, it creates a community that builds safety in the pursuit of happiness.”
Wood originally got the idea to create PVD House after she nearly lost her salon and subsequent housing. “The Salon Bianco building (where I was also living at the time) was being sold without a lease in place,” says Wood. “I thought, what would I do, with one month to move everything?”
That same week, she also befriended a client who helped place an eighteen-year-old foster youth in a home, where they felt safe enough to come out of the closet, but once they decided to do that, the parents returned the child, so they no longer had a place to live. “My client had just received this call before sitting in my chair at the salon,” Wood says. “And after facing housing insecurity for the first time in my life at forty, I thought, I can’t even imagine how much harder that would be at eighteen. And that’s when this mission began.”
Learn more about PVD House on Instagram.
