The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) — headed by Dr. Ben Carson, pictured above — just proposed a rule change that would roll back a 2016 Obama-era guidance requiring single-sex homeless shelters to accept transgender people.
The Washington Post reports:
“Under HUD’s proposed new rule… operators of single-sex shelters may consider someone’s biological sex — instead of how they self-identify — in making placement and accommodation decisions. They could ‘determine an individual’s sex based on a good faith belief that an individual seeking access … is not of the sex, as defined in the single sex facility’s policy, which the facility accommodates…’
The rule says that shelter operators can decide whether to apply this rule or not, but whichever way they apply it, it must be applied consistently. Because homeless people can’t always easily travel to another homeless shelter, if a local rejects a trans person for their gender identity, they may essentially be left out on the streets or referred to a shelter miles away.
Furthermore, because the rule says it must be applied consistently, when a shelter operator refers a homeless trans person to another shelter, that operator must be consistent in defining that person by the gender they’ve assigned to them rather than the gender the homeless person identifies as.
So, for example, if an operator rejects a trans woman from a women’s shelter because they see that trans woman as male, the shelter they refer the trans woman to could actually just be a men’s shelter because the operator is required to “consistently apply” their perception of a that person’s gender identity in their handling of that homeless client.
In short, the rule is written so broadly that it could be applied either way, either referring a trans person to a trans-friendly shelter or keeping them stuck in a transphobic and misgendering system.
“The programs impacted by this rule are life-saving for transgender people, particularly youth rejected by their families, and a lack of stable housing fuels the violence and abuse that takes the lives of many transgender people of color across the country,” said Mara Keisling, the Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE).
While we don’t have exact numbers on how many LGBTQ adults experience homelessness, a 2018 NCTE study showed that 82% of homeless trans people didn’t have a shelter. Considering the violence and stigma that trans people face in our society, leaving them unsheltered makes them more vulnerable to these and other harms.