When Jill Soloway accepted her Emmy for directing TransParent, she mentioned her transgender parent and said,

She could, tomorrow, go and try to find an apartment, and in 32 states it would be legal for the landlord to look her in the eye and say, ‘We don’t rent to trans people.’

For as long as Paola Ramirez has journeyed through her gender identity, she has been haunted by housing insecurity — first as a pained young boy living with her parents in Guatemala, then on her own as a gay man and, finally, as a transgender woman in New York.

Paola's studio apartment in Queens has a new owner, so her lease is up for renewal. But Paola is being told she cannot renew unless she presents some ID stating that her female name and gender.

I feel pressure.

--Ramirez

Paola works as a hairstylist. She knows that getting the demanded identification won't be easy...or cheap.

Getting the documentation that the landlord demanded isn’t easy. In some states, it requires medical intervention, such as surgery, according to Alison Gill, the senior legislative counsel at the Human Rights Campaign. Then there are states that require transgender people to submit a form signed by a medical professional that their gender identity is male or female to obtain a driver’s license.

Fortunately for Paola, in NYC, the requirements placed on her by her landlord are unlawful.

This is absolutely illegal. This highlights the sort of discrimination people who are transgender face. These things happen to transgender people every day, on every level.

--Eugene Chen, New York Legal Assistance Group

20 percent of transgender people in the United States have been discriminated against when seeking a home, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, and more than 10 percent have been evicted from their homes because of their gender identity, despite government rulings that this is illegal discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.

It is sort of a patchwork of protection. It’s not always clear when LGBT people have protections.

--Gill

Sometimes people just don’t have the energy and resources to litigate a discrimination claim when they’re worried about getting a roof over their heads.

--Chen

Transgender people face much higher rates of poverty, unemployment and discrimination, said Gill. They also have limited access to medical care because of their identity. And without identification matching their identity, many have a hard time opening bank accounts and obtaining birth certificates, leaving many transgender people denied crucial services.

These things really do build upon each other. Increased poverty can result in increased violence.

--Gill

We don’t have the agency to secure housing for ourselves. All these things together put us in a pretty precarious situation.

--Cherno Biko, trans activist

Chen works with low-income LGBTQ people, particularly from communities of color, who are facing eviction or housing discrimination. Much of his work, he said, focuses on tenants in gentrifying neighborhoods, where there can be greater pressure to turn over apartments.

Some of his transgender clients, he said, have been harassed by neighbors. He has met with tenants who have been sexually harassed and propositioned by building superintendents. Some workers, he said, have refused to make repairs, like fixing the sink, in transgender tenants’ apartments.

It’s sometimes difficult to resolve, and we can’t in every aspect. It really depends on the facts. In certain cases, a single comment made could color the way the landlord and tenant are going forward.

--Chen

Nicole Vasquez Citron, 21, is a trans man is southwest Texas.

It’s been difficult in my case.

--Citron

Weary of going to rental appointments only to be turned down for apartments, perhaps because his voice did not match the perceptions of his cropped hair and button-down shirts, he got to the point that he told prospective landlords over the phone that he was part of a same-sex, gender-fluid engaged couple looking for an apartment. (While they consider themselves to be in a heterosexual relationship, they tell landlords that they are a lesbian couple because “that’s what they see,” Cintron said.)

Almost all the landlords hung up on him. A few told him they would rent the apartment only as one person to a bedroom, which housing experts said is discriminatory on the basis of family status.

To impede housing discrimination, some transgender people and gender non-conforming people will take a friend who is cisgender — not transgender — to look at an apartment with them or get a cis roommate so they present to the landlord as a couple.

Trans and non-gender-conforming people have always had a hard time finding permanent housing. Now, with gentrification, you’re considered even less desirable to landlords.

--Imani Henry, Brooklyn community organizer

Paola Ramirez' landlord has come up with a compromise. She can transfer the lease to her fiancé, a cis male (They are scheduled to marry soon). The landlord would charge $300 for the name change and raise the rent on her rent-stabilized apartment by 20 percent.

Ah. rip her off = compromise?

Days before the lease was up, her fiancé relented and signed the new lease.

It just doesn’t seem fair.

--Ramirez