By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Officials at the Center on Halsted are adopting new procedures to respond to troublemakers who’ve threatened the safe space that the Center has tried to create for GLBT youths.

The Center’s executive director, Modesto “Tico” Valle, said Feb. 29 that gangbangers and others seeking to exploit the GLBT youths who come to the Center have led officials to be more stringent in identifying youths who participate in the Center’s programs.

“We’re trying to create membership programs that help us identify the youths we’re trying to help,” Valle said. “There are programs across the country that are models for this that we’ve looked at.”

Since the Center opened its new facility at Halsted and Waveland early last summer, the number of youths accessing its services has skyrocketed. But recently, Valle said, that success has also attracted people with harmful intentions.

“Right now it’s just overwhelming,” he said. “We’re getting a lot of complaints of kids on the street. …In our community we’re already dealing with problems related to racism, and now we’ve got gangbangers on our corner.”

Valle said it’s important that GLBT youths who are part of the Center’s programs know they’re still welcome at the Center. It’s also important, he said, that they feel safe there and respect others who are using the building and live in the neighborhood.

“You can be here if you are respectful to one another,” Valle said. “Those kids are welcome here. But there are those who are just trying to ruin it for everyone else, and right now they’re just exploiting our kids.”

Alds. Helen Shiller (46th) and Tom Tunney (44th) are involved in helping to address the issue, he said. Also, Valle said, the youths in the Center’s programs have spent a lot of time lately discussing the problems.

“Our kids actually did a lot of brainstorming and created a peer jury,” he said. “They’re more rigid than we are.”

Ultimately, Valle said, the Center’s goal is to provide a better environment, not a more restrictive one, for GLBT youths.

“These are great youth,” he said. “They’re wonderful youth. But it’s about how we create a safe, nurturing environment.”