Forney was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by a single mother. Forney said that he first engaged in sex work at 13, and that the $40 made him feel rich. Rejected by his family, at 13 Forney was put in a group home, from which he soon ran away. Forney was in a series of foster placements, but found the streets preferable. Forney continued to work as a sex worker, often dressed in women's clothing. Forney admitted to using crack cocaine "because it eased the degradation and fear" from sex work. At 17, Forney joined the Safe Horizon Streetwork program, where counselors helped him acquire a Social Security card and a medical card. Forney completed a GED and, at the time of his death, had started to work with the staff to help other homeless youth. After turning 18, Forney received a settlement for a childhood car accident, but remained estranged from his family, and was ineligible for city youth shelters after reaching the age of 19. Proudly HIV-negative, Forney became good at peer counseling and promoted safety, carrying a pocketful of condoms and offering them to drug dealers. Forney said, "I became a peer educator because I see so many HIV-infected people on the stroll. Even now, there are people who don't know how to use condoms." In 1996, Forney was invited to San Francisco, California, to tell social workers about the needs of homeless transgender youth. At 4 a.m. on December 5, 1997, Forney was found by the policeshot to death on the sidewalk in front of a housing project on East 131st Street in Harlem. According to The New York Times Forney was the third young transgender sex worker murdered in Harlem in fourteen months. The killing has never been solved. Over seventy people attended Forney's memorial service.
Ali Forney Center
When Carl Siciliano started a center for homeless LGBT youth in New York in 2002, he named it the Ali Forney Center in Forney's memory. The center opened in June 2002. It serves mostly Manhattan and Brooklyn youth aged 16 to 24 years, providing them with safe shelter and other help in addition to counseling for their families where needed.
