When it comes to fighting for Staten Island’s LGBTQ community, Jeremiah Jurkiewicz, assistant director of CUNY College of Staten Island’s LGBTQ Resource Center, has been at this for a while—for over 13 years to be exact.
Jurkiewicz has been at the reins of the resource center since 2013, after first joining the staff part-time the year prior. On College of Staten Island’s campus, he’s all over the place—visiting different classes, working with queer students and their parents, and communicating with the university’s nursing department to make sure that students are getting the proper treatment when needed.
“Leading the resource center originally started out as an unpaid, part-time gig,” Jurkiewicz said. “But it was something that I’m so passionate about, and it’s been great to see all of the change that has happened.”
After moving to the borough from Baltimore, Maryland, in 2009 to attend college at College of Staten Island and pursue a degree in the dramatic arts, Jurkiewicz himself was searching for an LGBTQ community upon arriving on campus and luckily found one—a Gay-Straight Alliance, which is common at most universities. He and his classmates convinced the College of Staten Island to open the center after finding the previous services inadequate for queer students at the school.
Jurkiewicz says that this demonstrates a phenomenon that has largely gone unnoticed: The climate for the LGBTQ community in New York City’s most conservative borough is steadily improving, with many queer Staten Islanders feeling an increased sense of belonging and inclusion.
“Yeah, I would say there has been some improvement in Staten Island,” Jukewicz says. “I mean, even on a personal level, the resource center has grown a bunch—the office I have now used to be the whole center. Now we have an entire wing of one of our academic buildings. Our physical space has grown because our community has grown.”
Over the past two years, hate crimes on the island have declined by nearly 30 percent, police statistics show. And earlier this year, Staten Island’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade allowed LGBTQ residents to march under their own banner—under the guidance of The Pride Center—for the first time in the celebration’s six-decade history.
Challenges do remain in Staten Island, however. Not everyone celebrated the Pride Center’s inclusion in the parade. In response, Bishop Peter Byrne of Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church withdrew his church’s participation from the parade.
“The Pride Center promotes ideas and practices that blatantly contradict the church’s teaching on chastity,’’ he wrote. That is an indisputable fact. Its presence in the parade signifies that the gathering not only does not promote, but actually undermines, Catholic devotion.”
Additionally, despite the year-over-year decrease in hate crimes, they are still occurring in the borough. There have been twelve instances of hate crimes through 2025 so far, according to the NYPD. Meanwhile, much-needed services for the community—such as housing and mental health services—remain in short supply.
LGBTQ youth, who account for only 4.5% of youth across New York City, account for as much as 40% of the homeless youth population, according to New York State’s Office of Children and Family Services. Housing services providers such as the Ali Forney Center host kids in “home-like apartments” in Queens and Brooklyn, but they are in hyper-limited supply, with just 66 beds being offered for at-risk queer youth. None of these facilities has a presence in Staten Island.
The College of Staten Island’s resource center does work alongside the greater community. To get full support from them, however, one must be an enrolled student. There are a large number of citywide programs that exist for the community—the Anti-Violence Project, PFLAG NYC, and the Trevor Project are perhaps the largest. Staten Island, however, is the most isolated of the five boroughs, with the fewest public transit options.
“There are a number of organizations that do intersectional work; there are a couple of immigrant-focused organizations — El Centro and another one that had a trans Latina group as part of it,” Jurkiewicz says. “But I would say that there aren't enough directly for LGBTQ people throughout the island.”
Jurkiewicz also says that housing services are “greatly lacking” in the borough, which affects even students attending the College of Staten Island, as some are forced to commute in from other boroughs to attend school.
“I think there is just not enough youth housing — like the unavailability of it on this island,” Jurkiewicz says. “If you fall into that age category and find yourself homeless or kicked out, it’s tough. I've had students who have had to live in other boroughs while continuing their education here, because there just wasn't anything available on Staten Island for them.”
An easy solution would be for services to invest more in Staten Island, but, as Jurkiewicz notes, residents in the borough have an aversion towards new housing being built. Jurkiewicz insists that the people’s resistance is not specifically towards LGBTQ individuals, but rather a general NIMBYist mindset across the entire city.
“You do find that there is a resistance, but I think that's often all across the city,” he added. There are presumptions that people make of anyone who utilizes or needs long-term shelter housing.
Staten Island is the city’s most conservative borough by a wide margin—Donald Trump received nearly 64 percent of the vote in Richmond County in the 2024 Presidential Election. And for years, people could easily point to multiple examples of intolerance and hate.
Back in December 2022, a drag show hosted by the Staten Island Children’s Museum was met with a protest of roughly 60 people, including multiple members of the Proud Boys, a far-right militant organization, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. The protests were led by Scott LoBaido, whom the Staten Island Advance described as a “controversial artist/activist” at the time.
In March 2024, dozens of books related to gender and sexuality were found in the dumpster behind the Henry Boehm School (PS 55), which were labeled “Mosaic,” a program introduced by the Bill de Blasio administration back in 2019 to diversify course materials.
Less than two months later, Farrell Nicholson, a woman who is a member of the LGBTQ community, was attacked in Staten Island’s Port Richmond neighborhood. Nicholson was walking on Castleton Ave. streets on May 14, 2024, when she was struck by Augustin Nadreau, a 29-year-old man who is assumed to be homeless, police records indicate. Nadreau confronted and berated her with homophobic slurs. “F—-ing f——t,” Nadreau screamed while proceeding to repeatedly slam a brick on her right arm, leaving Nicholson with “lacerations, redness, bruising, swelling, bleeding, and substantial pain,” according to the police report.
With Nicholson left in a state of disarray from the attack—and slumped over the bushes lining the residence—Nadreau snatched her cell phone and ran off. Police were able to track down Nadreau using Nicholson’s stolen phone that he had on his person after some time, finding him close to the scene later in the evening. Nadreau has had previous run-ins with the NYPD, with him being convicted on April 10, 2024, of Assault in the Second Degree, and was set to serve a nine-month prison sentence.
Although not confirmed, police records indicate that Nicholson was, at the very least, experiencing housing insecurity. Upon further research, no homes are listed as Nicholson’s permanent residence, and her contact information could not be found.
Despite the heinous attack, some note that the history of Staten Island’s LGBTQ community is richer and more complex than those incidents might suggest. In fact, it stretches as far back as the 19th century.
Photographer Alice Austen, who spent most of her life living in the Shore Acres neighborhood on Staten Island, is where the known history starts. Austen, who was born in 1866, was one of the first female photographers who conducted their work outside of the studio. A lot of Austen’s work featured Victorian women living non-traditional lifestyles and was not made for the public.
Austen was in a long-term relationship with Gertrude Tate, a teacher from Brooklyn, from 1897 until Austen died in 1952. In the decades following her death, Austen’s home with Tate was saved from demolition and ultimately designated a New York City landmark in 1975, and later a National Historic Landmark in 1993.
Austen’s longtime residence in Shore Acres has since been transformed into a museum celebrating both her life and work. The house is nestled up against the Narrows, facing Brooklyn—it’s inaccessible by the adjacent road, with a small sign in front of a dirt path leading to the house. Upon entering, the museum has a sense of cramped coziness to it—almost as if you’re stepping back in time to when Austen herself was living in the space.
The Alice Austen House became a National Historic Landmark in 1993 and later a Historic Artist Home and Studio in 2002. Despite Austen’s history as a photographer being recognized for decades, her being in a queer relationship was mostly hidden until 2017, when Victoria Munro took over as the museum’s executive director after originally being a consultant. Originally from New Zealand, Munro, who calls herself a queer artist and educator, had a vision to better recognize Austen and “fully embrace” the LGBTQ history behind it.
“I took the director role when it came up because of how desperately the space needed to be queered,” Munro said. “I’ve spent the past eight years doing that work, and it has since really grown and become a platform for LGBTQ artists.”
Prior to her tenure, Munro argues, the museum felt somewhat like a “private club,” and many people in Staten Island’s queer community did not originally feel that the space was really for them. Now, with every exhibit that is showcased at the museum, Munro makes sure that it involves the LGBTQ community.
“If you come and do a program at the Alice Austin House, and it's about water ecology, it's freaking queer,” Munro said. “Okay, everything's queer, and so it is.”
The Alice Austen House is just one of the examples of how LGBTQ history has existed on Staten Island for decades, but it was not nearly as out in the open when compared to the other four boroughs.
In the 1970s, the former Staten Island Community College had a “Gay Liberation Club,” though it was forced to operate in secrecy. In 1988, the Staten Island AIDS Task Force was created. Audre Lorde, a lesbian professor and activist who rose to prominence during the Civil Rights Era, was a longtime resident of Stapleton Heights on the borough’s North Shore.
Amanda Davis, as the executive director of the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites project, has been studying this history, working to preserve landmarks that have contributed to the city’s vast queer history. Staten Island Community College and Lorde’s home are among the places the project has researched.
The sites located in Staten Island—which can be found via an interactive map on the nonprofit’s website—are mostly concentrated in the St. George neighborhood at the top of the island. The Mayfair Bar and Grill, which stood on the corner of Hyatt Street and Stuyvassent Place, was “gay-friendly on Friday evenings from the late 50s to its closure in the late 70s,” according to Davis. The Historic Sites Project put the bar on its sites map in March 2017.
The Historic Sites project has designated places outside of the North Shore, however. Beach Haven Bar became the borough’s first lesbian bar in the 1970s and was located on Father Capodanno Boulevard in Midland Beach.
Davis says that the process of uncovering history on Staten Island is more community-based compared to the other boroughs due to the lack of recorded documentation.
“Staten Island is one of those places where you might think, ‘Are we going to find anything here?’’ Davis said. “In fact, it has some of the earliest history that we've documented, and it has been discovered from speaking to Staten Islanders who suggested sites to us.”
Unlike Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, which has historically had a queer presence, and Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, which is quickly emerging as a hotspot for Gen-Z members of the LGBTQ community, Staten Island’s queer residents remain mostly spread out in the borough.
Staten Island also has by far the lowest percentage of residents who identify as a member of the LGBTQ community, just 3 percent, according to a 2017 survey conducted by the NYC Comptroller’s Office. Such a small number can make it difficult to organize and attempt to stop the tensions from festering.
Gender and transgender issues appear to be a common theme regarding the abrasiveness towards LGBTQ people on Staten Island. Jurkiewicz thinks that the residents of Staten Island tend to turn on the borough’s entire LGBTQ community because of the attack on transgender individuals.
“On Staten Island, we have to better advocate for transgender people,” Jurkiewicz said. “They are an integral part of our community. They're being demonized right now. They're trying to figure out how to survive in our world, just like anyone else. So I think we need to do a better job of saying there's nothing wrong with trans people.”
Davis echoed this sentiment, pointing to how the Historic Sites Project is being affected by the anti-trans discourse. Over the past year, the project has lost federal funding and has seen its research about trans and queer individuals scrubbed from government websites without “any direct contact” from the agencies.
“Following an executive order from the President earlier this year, we saw the removal of Trans and Queer mentions,” Davis said. “They did a sweep through the National Park Service website and removed anything that said LGBTQ+; now it just says LGB.”
The tension regarding the transgender community seems to be a wall in establishing more services for LGBTQ individuals in the borough. For example, the Trump administration cut $35 million in federal funding for New York City schools because it refused to overhaul its gender policies.
Queer youth are in dire need of services, as they often can act as a safety net if their family is not accepting, something that Jurkiewicz says happens in Staten Island, but argues that it is an issue seen citywide.
“Staten Island tends to be the most conservative, but LGBTQ+ people struggle with acceptance all across the city,” Jurkiewicz says. “It really comes down to what's your individual household and how accepting they are.”
Without these services, it is easy for LGBTQ youth to fall behind when growing up, Dr. Sihoban Brooks, chair of the African-American Studies program at California State University-Fullerton and author of “Everyday Violence in Black and Latinx LGBT Communities,” argues.
“Young LGBT people facing violence at home either leave or are kicked out of their homes,” she says, “which leads them into the streets, and often into the criminal justice system.”
Back at the museum, Munro is making sure that LGBTQ youth have a safe space through gender sexuality alliances and the schools on Staten Island. Munro believes that the Alice Austen House can give queer young people a place to express themselves in a place where they can often feel isolated.
“Our largest program is with the gender sexuality alliances and schools,” Munro said. “I mean, Staten Island has a Pride Center, but going to the Pride Center is really outing yourself; that's a bold move when you're 13 or 14 years old. You can come on a school trip to the Alice Austin house, which is fully funded by us and connects gender sexuality alliances together.”
“Some of those are now working for us or volunteering with us, and that community has just snowballed into something much larger than it once was,” she added.