When Georgi Georgievski came out to his parents as gay during his first year of university, that decision cost him dearly. He is, literally, still paying for it, in the form of student debt.
He’s not alone. A new poll by Forum Research, believed to be the first Canadian survey on student debt to ask about sexual orientation, shows the LGBTQ+ community is harder hit. Members are more likely to rack up greater student debt, take on a second job to pay it off, and make lifestyle changes because of it.
Before the revelation, Georgievski lived with his parents and they paid for his education at the University of Toronto. But afterwards, he says he was kicked out of the home, ostracized from his family and forced into emergency housing at the university, where he stayed for a month before couch-surfing at friends’ places.
Homeless, he put his studies on hold and began working, first as a bank teller and then a program co-ordinator at Egale Canada, which works to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people.
“My work (at Egale) helped me find meaning in my trauma,” recalls Georgievski, 28. “It gave me, almost, a purpose and inspired me to go back to school.”
Returning to university, after a two-year hiatus, required a student loan. He got it, along with an undergraduate and master’s degree.
“I ended up with almost $50,000 (in student debt),” says Georgievski, who graduated in December. To pay it off more quickly — he now owes $42,000 — he juggles two jobs, as a part-time research assistant at the university and a full-time social worker in transitional care at Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, part of Sinai Health System. And he’s extremely conscious about how he spends money. He’s cut back on trips, entertainment and buying clothes and packs his lunch everyday.
The Forum Poll, conducted by phone in late August, was a random sample of 1,163 Canadians, aged 16 and up, who attended post-secondary school. About one in 10 self-identified as LGBTQ2SIAP+ — this includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, two-spirit, intersex, asexual, or pansexual — and they tended be younger than 45.
The LGBTQ+ respondents were more adversely impacted by student debt, compared with non-LGBTQ+. For starters, they were more likely to say a student loan was very important to getting an education (76 per cent compared with 68 per cent.) And, they wound up with more student debt: 66 per cent owed more than $10,000, compared with 50 per cent; and about 10 per cent owed more that $70,000, compared with just 1 per cent of non-LGBTQ+.
Also, those who are LGBTQ+ were more likely to have taken on a second job to pay off their debt (28 per cent compared with 23 per cent), altered their spending lifestyle because of it (48 per cent compared with 33 per cent) and made significant changes to career plans because of it (31 per cent compared with 20 per cent.)
“They (members of the LGBTQ+ community) do accumulate more debt when they’re finishing their education than people outside the community,” says Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff, adding more research is needed on this. “We can only speculate why it might be.”
David J. Brennan, associate professor at University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, believes lack of family support and mental health costs contribute to the higher debt.
“When people are not engaged with their families — because their families have rejected them for being LGBTQ or because they feel they need to step away from their families for fear of that rejection — they’re not going to have the same kinds of financial supports, and even emotional supports.”
He notes studies show marginalized students have higher rates of mental health issues, and says if they’re not connected to a support network, such as a family, they’re left to manage on their own.
“Talking to a mental health counsellor might help someone to deal with the pressures of coming out and identifying as LGBT,” he says, adding issues of anxiety and depression are fairly common. “But those things cost money.”
“And the impact of dealing with mental health, or other kinds of stress-related issues, might mean it takes longer to get through school, so you end up spending more.”
For Joe, a transmale who works at The 519, a city agency that services the LGBTQ+ community, transitioning in university meant paying for surgery and testosterone prescriptions. That led to even greater student debt, which he incurred in the first place because he was estranged from his family.
“I couldn’t imagine any kind of future for myself if I wasn’t able to transition and live authentically,” recalls Joe, 35.
Adding to the financial strain was the cost of changing his identification and lost wages during the transition period, when he was gender-ambiguous and couldn’t find a job. It was just this year that Joe paid off his student debt of $25,000.
Georgievski says despite his challenges, his story is of one “resilience.”
“As much as student debt is a burden, it also afforded me the opportunity to go back to school, get the education I always wanted, become a social worker and have a meaningful job. And, come to a place where I can now pay off my student debt.”
After five years, he says he reconciled with his family, and now has a great relationship with his parents.
“When they were able to see that their son was happy, fulfilled and had succeeded ... That really changed their perspective.
“Now we have a wonderful relationship and they’re very big supports.”
(Results of the total sample in The Forum Poll are considered accurate plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margins of error for the subsample group of LGBTQ respondents is plus or minus 9.5 percentage points, and plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for non-LGBTQ respondents.)
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