SAN FRANCISCO: Tommi Avicolli Mecca, director of counseling programs at the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, still remembers the day six years ago when a young homeless gay Latino man came to his office in tears.
“His face was bruised, and he told me he’d run away from his family, and had been living in a homeless shelter,” Avicolli Mecca says. “He was attacked at the shelter for being gay, and was scared to return…”