San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Homeless trans people lack help
When Banko Brown, a 24year-old transgender Black man, was shot and killed by a Walgreens security guard on Market Street in late April, he was in the middle of a desperate search for a home. According to Julia Arroyo, co-executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center where Brown was an intern, he tried shelters, got on waitlists and applied for permanent supportive housing through the city.
Nothing worked. Safe spaces for homeless people who are trans are hard to find.
For Brown, Arroyo told me, being placed in gender-specific shelter systems put him at risk.
“He was assaulted on multiple occasions,” she said. “He was physically not safe. He would say, ‘I need housing around other trans people. When they place me in the binary … I’m experiencing violence on both ends.’ ”
Out of options, Brown took to sleeping where he could: in doorways, on BART trains and even in the Young Women’s Freedom Center offices.
“For him, it was the only place where he could get a little rest,” Arroyo said. “He was so tired.”
San Francisco has long prided itself on being a sanctuary for LGBTQ people. As the rest of the country passes laws banning trans people’s access to health care, sports teams or bathrooms that match their gender, this city is moving in the opposite direction. We have a Transgender District, a guaranteed income program for trans people facing financial insecurity and a drag laureate. One year ago, Mayor London Breed announced her intention to end trans homelessness by 2027.
And yet trans people in San Francisco are still 18 times more likely than the general population to experience homelessness. Last year, city officials estimated that around 400 trans people were homeless at any given time in the city. There aren’t enough resources to serve this population.
San Francisco has spent $3.4 million on rental subsidies that help trans people with one-time financial assistance — such as to pay back rent to avoid eviction or make a security deposit on a place to exit homelessness. More than 150 people have been served by the subsidy program, but 143 more are on the waitlist.
The Bobbie Jean Baker House, a transitional housing
City officials estimated that 400 trans people were homeless at any given time . ... There aren’t enough resources to serve them.
program with 15 beds, has helped 38 trans people exit homelessness since 2019 — but there are still 96 people on its waitlist.
The Taimon Booton Navigation Center has 57 beds occupied and is ramping up operations to open more. But as one of the only trans-specific homeless shelters in the United States, it’s fielding desperate requests not just from local people in need, but from trans people everywhere, said Alyce James, its program director.
San Francisco’s guaranteed income program, meanwhile, only serves 55 people.
When I shared the waitlist numbers with Arroyo, she said it made her want to cry.
“This is what Banko was up against.”
Some help is on the way. In February, the city launched a search for organizations to run a new permanent supportive housing site for trans youth and to distribute 50 ongoing rental subsidies. Three behavioral health clinicians will be hired to serve trans youth at risk of or already experiencing homelessness.
Pau Crego, executive director of the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, said the first year of Breed’s mission to end trans homelessness has “set the building blocks for a thoughtful plan.” As city agencies and nonprofit providers ramp up their operations, Crego said, “We are on track to make significant strides in the second year of this initiative.”
Despite these steps forward, however, the conversation around trans resources has quieted. A year ago, San Francisco was loud and proud about its work. Now, as much of the rest of the nation ramps up hate-fueled attacks on LGTBQ people, there’s a new hesitancy from nonprofit workers and city government to share details of their work with the media even as we head into Pride Month.
For James, the threat of violence hangs over her navigation center staff, many of whom are trans and formerly homeless themselves.
“Every day our staff have to walk onto site, knowing that we’re targeted as a community,” she told me. “It’s some of the wildest trauma to have to go to work, seeking stability and to know that the world is not safe for us.”
Crego echoes this concern. “Multiple LGBTQIA+ community-based organizations have received attacks within the last year, ranging from hate speech over phone or email, to death threats towards individual leaders, to bomb threats directed at organizations,” he told me. “This has forced those of us doing this work, and the city overall, to consider safety at every step of the way: we can no longer talk as openly as before about the programs and initiatives we
do. As someone who has worked in trans advocacy for almost two decades, I thought the worse was behind us. I can no longer safely make that assumption, even in San Francisco.”
Caution is certainly understandable. But Brown’s death raises the question of what safety really means. San Francisco is all too willing to point outside of its boundaries at the harm others have wrought and to highlight the threat they pose to our communities. It’s harder to look at ourselves.
The reality, as trans people of color know all too well, is that violence takes many forms. Brown was not protected on San Francisco’s streets, at its shelters and even at Walgreens, where you can be shot to death for allegedly stealing food.
“S.F. has been known for trans children to be safe here,” Arroyo said. But it’s not always safe, she countered. Not if you’re Black, hungry and homeless.