Acollege education no longer functions – if it ever did – as a ticket out of poverty, especially not for people at the crux of different forms of discrimination. As a trans person of color and survivor of LGBTQ youth homelessness, I struggled after graduating from college. Actually, that sentence belongs in the present tense: I am still struggling very much.

I graduated in May with my master’s degree from New York University. I have not been hired for full-time work yet and, without familial wealth or support, I can likely face homelessness – again. I was actually without a home from April to August of this year, sleeping on friends’ couches.

There is enough money in my savings account to last me until the end of February but, if I do not find work by then, I’m not sure what will happen. What is a survivor of LGBTQ youth homelessness going to do if they are facing employment discrimination, housing discrimination and have no familial support to help them during the transition out of college?

I thought getting a higher education would make things different, but it turns out demographics have been stacked against me the whole time. “Higher education alone cannot level the playing field [of the racial and ethnic wealth gap],” according to a study covered by the New York Times. I’ve clearly found that to be true.

It can’t negate the effects of LGBTQ youth homelessness, either. LGBTQ people make up as much as 40% of the homeless youth population. According to the Ali Forney Center, there are 200,000 homeless LGBTQ youths in the US, and the top reason for their homelessness is homophobia and family rejection. In high school, I often slept at my friend’s houses, or parks, or anywhere I could go to escape the violence of my childhood home.

And transgender adults like me are four times as likely to have a household income under $10,000 and twice as likely to be unemployed than a cisgender person in the US. We are also more likely to be discriminated against on the housing market – one in five trans people in the US has been discriminated when seeking a home, and more than one in 10 has been evicted from their homes because of their gender identity, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.

This is a structural problem, so we need structural solutions. The LGBTQ movement should take notice – and take care – of the homeless youth (of color) in their community that struggle into young adulthood because of circumstances such as employment and housing discrimination.

Homeless LGBTQ youth need free and optional housing to supplement the estimated 4,000 beds available for homeless young adults nationwide, only about 350 of which are LGBTQ specific, the Ali Forney head told NBC News last year.

We need affirmative action in the workplace and in housing (there are employment laws and housing laws to protect against gender-based discrimination but laws aren’t always followed).

We need to focus on decriminalizing sex work (as suggested by Amnesty International this year) and decriminalizing drug use ( Portugal did it 14 years ago, and the prevalence of drug use dropped). Homeless LGBTQ youth sometimes turn to alternative forms of income such as sex work and selling drugs in order to survive. This, in turn, means frequent contact with the police. People should not be criminalized for poverty.

We need healthcare and doctors who understand the trans community. We need to be able to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of our choice and move through the world safely (gender discrimination guidelines like the ones New York City just passed are a start). We need opportunities to help us succeed into our adulthood, to become the adults that we want to become.