“ In my career of community organizing, HIV services, LGBTQ anti-violence education, and housing policy and advocacy, themes remain the same. I know that oppression makes people ill. Systems are broken. Burnout sustains broken systems. People are always the experts in their own lives. As a person with a hearty critique of professionalized nonprofit spaces, I have also spent the past 15+ years witnessing the reality of homelessness and mental health challenges of people who are barred from systems of care.

Another salient and disturbing thread is the damaging ways we treat transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (TGNCNB) people in spaces claiming to help and to heal, in both LGBTQ+ and broader arenas alike. One area where this is consistently evident is in housing advocacy.

In Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, I’ve worked in communities of both shared and divergent experiences. As a white, femme, cisgender woman, my employment options, mobility within employment, and access to an array of housing choices within my budget demonstrate the privileges my queer identity entails. It has taken time, interrogation, and my own steps in healing to recognize my own intergenerational connection to experiences of violence, mental illness, addiction, and economic instability that inform my commitment to social justice work and the fight for collective liberation.

I also know that working to build coalitions and organize across difference, leveraging my privileges to advocate for change, and stepping back to listen to people whose stories I don’t share requires intentionality. And what keeps me in this (often heartbreaking) arena of the nonprofit sector is that I know we cannot continue to demand labor from people most deeply harmed by systemic oppression. I make concerted efforts to recognize the line between co-opting the work of oppressed communities, and knowing my labor is needed and a responsibility—if used with intention and reverence. So, I choose each day to continue to work in imperfect systems to shift culture, knowing full-well that radically new systems are necessary in movement building and healing community trauma.

In every nonprofit workplace of my career, I’ve witnessed transphobia and violence at the hands of social workers, case managers, advocates, policy makers, LGB community spaces, and decision makers who align themselves with values of equity. So why the continued disconnection between our justice work and our participation in institutionalized and interpersonal violence against trans communities? And why are only some people in the housing arena just recently naming this glaring disparity?

Since January of 2019, I have work in SAGE’s National LGBT Elder Housing Initiative, and I attempt to center racial justice and trans justice in all conversations around housing access and affordability. To me, the National Housing Initiative is about honoring the experiences and stories of our elders, people who have paved the way to allow our communities to live boldly and with courage. And although we are at times bonded by the unfortunate shared experience of bigotry, we also know that our community is vast and not a monolith. At a time where we have been told to shelter in place, we know that creating spaces of home is something queer people have always done. But amidst the pandemic, we also know that not everyone has access to shelter during this time—and sometimes shelter is not safe. Navigating safety is also something our communities have learned to do to survive—but this is particularly true for TGNCNB people.

As LGBTQ+ communities are experiencing terrifying setbacks due to a fascist federal administration, the victories achieved over the last 50 years tend to benefit white gay and lesbian people, lacking a deeper analysis of violence against trans communities. Rejection from family of origin, being barred from or harassed in employment settings, traumatizing medical settings, landlord harassment, and homeless shelter access are all examples of the uniquely discriminatory experiences TGNCNB folks may face in their lifetime. We know that this is compounded for people of color, sex workers, undocumented people, and other trans people with intersecting oppressed identities. And working in aging, I also know that age is subjective—“elder” identity is different for trans people due to rampant discrimination and the impact of systemic and interpersonal violence on health and survival. This begs the question of whether “senior” services should be more nuanced to include a range of ages for communities whose life expectancy is much shorter than white, cisgender people.

It may come as a surprise to some people that sexual orientation and gender identity are not explicitly protected classes under federal fair housing law. The current administration has made every attempt to further gut fair housing protections and explicitly ban trans people from homeless shelters and other social services. In a time when systems are failing many communities, it is important to recognize that trans folks have always created their own families and systems. Homesharing is a model that is becoming more institutionalized by nonprofits, but this is not a new concept to trans communities. Ballroom culture is an example that is gaining more wide recognition with tv shows like Pose. But the seeming invisibility of trans people from mainstream gay stories and history is yet another symptom of the erasure trans communities continue to experience—and it shows up in blatant barriers to safe and affordable housing.

It is evident in the ways people I worked with in Skid Row would often rather live on the street than enter violent shelter systems. It is evident in the fear people have of their landlords, super-intendents, or neighbors once they may acquire affordable housing in congregate settings. It is evident in the ways trans women are treated in emergency rooms, harassed by cops, experience intimate partner violence, or feel unsafe seeing a primary care doctor. And it is evident in our lack of officially recorded data on homelessness amongst TGNCNB communities, a reminder that a lack of data IS the data. This needs to change, in accountable, non-tokenizing ways that invest in trans leadership, expertise, and power.

Because you cannot legally build federally funded trans-exclusive affordable housing (and housing systems are often sites of violence against TGNCNB folks), people have always found ways to create alternative housing. In 1970, STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) House was a refuge for homeless TGNC youth in New York City until they were evicted from the East Village building. Today, Ceyenne Doroshow and her organization, GLITS Inc., have been providing temporary housing to Black trans people recently released from Rikers Island. Through community organizing and fundraising, GLITS is in the process of signing two leases and purchasing two buildings to create housing and support for Black trans people in New York City. These community solutions demonstrate the perseverance, self-determination, and leadership of folks who have faced numerous barriers to safe, affordable, and permanent housing. Let’s highlight, invest in, and support these models. Let’s create new systems that cultivate a world where this is not a dire need, but one of many options available for TGNCNB people to survive, thrive, and cultivate homes.

Survival mode is not the end goal. Safety and liberation for everyone, for people living in the margins, is what we work towards. I am calling on queer and straight cisgender folks to recognize the deep disparity that continues to exist for TGNCNB people in affordable and long-term housing access. In this particular moment, we have a responsibility to create safety, belonging, and culturally competent spaces for all of us to live with dignity—so let’s stop avoiding the work, let’s seek guidance from trans people, let’s PAY and concede decision-making power to trans people, and let’s show up to listen and uplift the voices of TGNCNB communities. Trans folks have been doing this work all along, and it’s time to honor (and pay) them to continue the fight. “

-Sydney Koop-Richardson

Sydney Kopp-Richardson is the Director of SAGE’s National LGBT Elder Housing Initiative, working to reshape the housing landscape nationally and increase the availability of safer LGBT elder housing through policy advocacy, research, and housing development. Previously, Sydney worked in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City in direct service, LGBTQ organizing and advocacy, and policy analysis around affordable housing development. Through an anti-racist framework, Sydney centers the needs of LGBTQ communities, people involved in the justice system, people living with mental health challenges, and others living in the margins. Sydney has developed anti-violence curriculum and policy recommendations for LGBTQ communities and infuses this into her work in housing development and sexual violence prevention in New York City nightlife venues. Sydney brings a reverence for the expertise and legacies of LGBTQ elders in the formation of policies and programming developed to serve them in the fight for collective liberation, which drives her professional, community, and personal energies.