For Transgender Homeless, Choice Of Shelter Can Prevent Violence

Tiffany Jones became homeless when she aged out of foster care last year. Although Jones identifies as a woman and takes female hormones, her legal paperwork identifies her as a man. But Jones was pleasantly surprised when she went to apply for help at a men's shelter last September and was asked if she was transgender and wanted to live in a women’s shelter.

"They saw that I’m a woman,” says Jones, 22, who has been living in a women’s shelter for 10 months. “There’s still some negative attention surrounding living with women. I had a couple fights when I first came in but not anymore. I had to prove a point that just because I’m transgender there’s no way of beating me. But if I were in the men’s shelter I’d be beaten up or raped,” she said.

Jones was fortunate that the staff member who handled her intake at the men's shelter knew about [ the city Department of Homeless Services (DHS) policy allowing a transgender and gender nonconforming person to choose to stay in the shelter for the gender that he or she identifies as, regardless of whether the person has taken legal or medical steps to align his or her body with that identity.

New York City's policy was implemented in January 2006 after LGBT advocates lobbied DHS for three years about ending the harassment of transgender women living in men's shelters.

Besides permitting transgender shelter-seekers to stay in shelters appropriate to their identity, the policy states that "staff will address individuals with names, titles and other terms appropriate to their gender identity" and "staff at Intake/Shelter assignments will receive training on diversity, transgender and intersex issues."

The policy defines transgender as "an umbrella term that includes anyone whose gender identity and/or gender expression does not match society's expectations of how an individual assigned a particular sex at birth should behave or appear." The broad definition includes people who are androgynous, drag queens or kings and cross-dressers.

The policy was implemented as a four-year pilot program in January 2006 at three men's and three women's shelters. The written policy has not been updated since the program's inception. But it now applies at all homeless shelters that receive city funding.

New York City, which operates the largest homeless shelter system in the U.S., housed 36,654 people on November 26, the most recent night for which statistics are available. The system links city-run intake centers, which determine whether people are eligible for shelter, with residences operated by 150 private providers who have contracts with the city.

A National Issue

Transgender and gender-nonconforming people are more likely to be homeless than the general population. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey's report on housing, to be released at the end of this year, showed that of the 6,560 people surveyed nationwide,19 percent of survey participants have experienced homelessness.

Many transgender people have less of a social safety net. They are less likely to have support from parents, who might kick their nonconforming children out of their homes. In addition, job-related discrimination leads to unemployment. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found 97 percent of the 6,560 people surveyed faced job-related discrimination, and the survey respondents faced unemployment at double the rate of the general population.

The survey found 19 percent of participants have experienced homelessness. Of that group, 29 percent were denied access to a shelter, 42 percent were "forced to live as the wrong gender to be allowed to stay in a shelter" and 47 percent decided to leave a shelter because of poor treatment. Twenty-five percent have been physically assaulted or attacked by resident or staff and 22 percent have been sexually assaulted by residents or staff.