On a recent Friday night, 22-year-old Azhrei Kernohaun sat in front of the Walgreens at 18th and Castro, a popular spot for people soliciting change, with a sign that read, "I bet you $1 you read this sign �" Please help thank you!"
Kernohaun, who identifies as queer, said the city helped get him into a single-room occupancy hotel on Market Street, but the $15 to $20 he collects on the streets helps him buy food and the occasional beer.
He said he'd love to get a job, but problems, including general anxiety disorder and Tourette syndrome, which can prompt vocal tics, have made keeping a job hard, he said.
It can be tough for anyone to make it in a city as expensive as San Francisco. But Kernohaun, who has long blond hair, a baseball cap and a dirty-looking jacket, chooses to stay.
"People treat me all right here, actually ... I don't get the feeling people are looking down on me, except literally," he observed from his position on the sidewalk. He said he sticks mainly to the Castro for panhandling because "I feel most at home here."
With even studio apartments frequently costing $1,500 a month and up, San Francisco might seem like an odd destination for a population that often relies on food service and retail jobs to get by. But for many young LGBT people, the longtime gay capital is still a logical choice.
Keone Holt, who lives in an $850-a-month hotel room in what many people call "the Tender Nob" �" where the Tenderloin meets Nob Hill �" said he lived in the Castro until it got too expensive. But the city's diversity has helped keep the 23-year-old gay retail worker and art student here.
"I love the city," he said. "I love what it represents. It's home."
Kyle Raccio, 21, visited the city in November and fell in love with it. He moved here in March.
About three months after moving to the city, Raccio, who's gay, hadn't found a job and was using his savings from his previous job as a leasing consultant in Illinois to pay the rent on his $1,375-a-month studio apartment in the Castro.
But he seemed to be following the message he wanted to share with others:
"You can have dreams," Raccio said. "You've got to make that move and take that risk."
Alicia Marie, a 19-year-old who lives near the Mission/Excelsior area with her mother and grandmother, said she wants to be on her own by the time she's 21.
She plans to continue pursuing her dream of modeling, although she's scared people won't accept her because she's transgender.
Alicia Marie's been to other states, but the thought of leaving San Francisco doesn't seem to have occurred to her. There's plenty of fun and diversity here, and she said she tends to stand out in other places �" she's six feet one inch tall, and that's without heels, she said.
"I think it's really supportive here, because this is the capital of where gay people are."
Meagan Crockett, a 19-year-old lesbian who lives with her parents in Fremont, said she was "kind of shocked" when she looked on Craigslist and found that a studio apartment can go for $2,100 in the city, but she still plans on moving here.
Crockett, who said she makes $16,000 to $17,000 a year teaching dance, said she's "not big on the whole roommate thing," but her parents are willing to help her as long as she's in school.
She, too, is drawn to the city by the diversity and support the city offers. Los Angeles, at least, seems to be out of the question.
There's "too much hustle and bustle, too much money," she said. " ... So many friends move down there come back within a year."
Still, San Francisco can be an almost impossible place to live.
According to people who work with young LGBTs, many kids end up on the city's streets after fleeing to San Francisco from abusive homes in other parts of the country or being aged out of foster care.
In 2004 Larkin Street Youth Services and openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty helped launch the Castro Youth Initiative, a program that now houses 26 youths in buildings throughout the Castro area. The initiative offers help with substance abuse issues, case management, and mental health referrals among other services.
But the city doesn't always treat homeless youth kindly.
"They become invisible sometimes," said Sherilyn Adams, Larkin Street's executive director. The agency aims to help provide stability to homeless and marginally housed youth through offering job skills and encouraging education. Adams, who noted the agency's expanded its services, said Larkin Street saw about 3,200 youth last year, about 1,000 more than the previous year.
Adams said about 900 a year have self-identified as LGBTQ. According to a report released last year by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute and the National Coalition for the Homeless, an analysis of the available research suggested that between 20 and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as LGBT.
Beck, who only uses one name and is the youth programs coordinator at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, said a lot of homeless youth never finish high school, often because of harassment, and they don't have the job skills or training needed for employment.
Adams notes homeless youth often have to go beyond asking for change to survive. She said 25 years ago, around the time Larkin Street started, youth were forced to get involved in sex work to barter for food and a place to stay.
"That has not changed," she said.