HUD regulations for transgender people in homeless shelters

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been finalizing its rules for the treatment of transgender people in shelters and the new regulations are scheduled to be released in September.

The new regulations are expected to require homeless shelters that receive federal support to treat transgender people as members of the gender with which they identify.

Transgender women are women regardless of whether they were born male.

If you’re a transgender woman and you walk into a homeless shelter and they treat you like a man, it’s traumatizing. These people are already vulnerable, they’re homeless, they don’t have a job. To face discrimination the entire time they’re there is a real problem.

--David Stacy, Human Rights Campaign

There is, of course, much uproar from religious organizations which operate many of the shelters...and from other quarters as well.

Tim Wildmon, president of the conservative American Family Association, lamented having to “make room for people who are sexually confused at the expense of everyone else.”

Transgender activists point out that Wildmon is obviously the confused party.

No one is in favor of beating up transgender people. but why do you have to force other people to feel really uncomfortable, and in some cases unsafe, just to make your political point?

What if I self-identify as a woman today, and tomorrow I want to self-identify as a man? Why not self identify as a minority? Today, I’m white. Tomorrow, I’m black.

--Wildmon

Feel free to doubt Wildmon's statement about assault of transgender people.

HUD’s proposed regulation instructs homeless shelters to disregard the “complaints of other shelter residents” who feel uncomfortable living with someone who is transgender.

"It is likewise prohibited to deny appropriate placement based on a perceived threat to health or safety that can be mitigated some other less burdensome way."

According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 19% of transgender people who sought emergency shelter at some point in their lives were turned away, while 42% were forced to stay in shelters for the gender they were assigned at birth.

The Fair Housing Act prohibits homeowners from refusing to sell or rent to people because of their race, religion or gender, but HUD is looking to extend similar protections to homeless shelters that provide short-term housing.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that only 30% of shelters in Virginia, Connecticut, Tennessee and Washington accommodate transgender women.

It makes no sense at all. Good, Christian organizations that are trying to help people do not need Washington dictating their bathroom or bedding policies.

--Wildmon

Opponents of the regulation say homeless shelters should be a safe haven for women who have been abused by their husbands and boyfriends. They say those women may feel that they are in danger living with a transgender woman who was born a man.

We, obviously, need to protect women who have been sexually abused. But if we don’t treat people consistently with their gender identity, then a woman who was abused by her boyfriend could be housed with a transgender man who looks like a man and has a beard.

--Stacy

The National Center for Transgender Equality survey found that 55 percent of transgender people who stayed in homeless shelters claim they were harassed by staff, while 1 in 4 say they were physically abused and 22 percent say they were sexually assaulted.

If you view someone as less human, it’s easier to have a higher level of violence against them.

--Stacy

Critics of the regulation have also raise the potential for men to pose as transgender women.

One of the guests at a rescue mission overheard someone on the street saying, ‘Dude, if you go down to the rescue mission and tell them you’re transgender, you can sleep in the women’s dorm and even shower with them. So that idea is out there, but I don’t know of any missions that have called the police because of it.

No one is trying to make transgender people feel awkward, but we’re concerned about the well-being and safety of everyone in our rescue missions

--John Ashmen, Association of Gospel Rescue Missions

HUD’s transgender policy would not provide a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for men who take advantage of the rules to prey on homeless women.

--Stacy

Nothing in this proposed rule is meant to prevent necessary and appropriate steps to address any fraudulent attempts to access services or legitimate safety concerns that may arise in any shelter.

--Proposed regulation

Breitbart, Newsmax, Lifesite, Church Militant, etc. are all outraged.

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I am so sick of rightist framing. Not speaking like an insensitive ass = political correctness. Living the gender identity with which you are born, the only one any of us has = "sexually confused" and "political point." People who speak in Luntzisms should shut up.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --