Southern Voice
Feb. 15, 2003
Source: http://www.southernvoice.com/atlanta/index.php3?pub=atl)
Shelters bar trans homeless
Upcoming report from mayor's commission
may include little on trans population, member says
By JENNIFER J. SMITH
"As of 14 Dec. I'm one of the homeless. Shelters don't take
transsexuals and I'm not changing back. Looks like I'm a goner.
Thanks for the support over the past few years. Hugs, Alice."
The outgoing, automatic reply on Alice Johnston's e-mail account
proved true a day later.
Johnston, 52 - an Army veteran of three wars, a librarian, a computer
engineer and a male-to-female transsexual - died from a self-inflicted
gunshot wound Dec. 15 along the banks of the Chattahoochee River
in Fulton County, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner's
office.
But if Atlanta homeless shelters, most of which receive federal
money, did not discriminate against transgendered people, Johnston
would "probably still be alive," Monica Helms, executive
director of Trans=Action, a transgender advocacy group, told the
city's Commission on Homelessness last month.
Local shelters will only accept transgendered people if they dress
as their birth sex, Helms testified during the Jan. 28 meeting.
"Alice did not present as a male, she did not look like a
male, and she certainly did not want to go back to presenting
as one after all the effort and struggle she put into finally
becoming who she really was," she said.
The commission was assembled by the United Way in December at
the request of Mayor Shirley Franklin. The 16-member panel includes
a variety of civic and business leaders, but no homeless service
providers.
The panel is scheduled to submit its recommendations to Franklin
by the end of this month. But while Helms and other activists
want the city's transgendered homeless population included in
the report, a spokesperson for the commission said that's unlikely.
"We all appreciated Monica making a presentation, and I think
everybody agreed that the need needs to be addressed," said
commission member Bill Bolling, executive director of the Atlanta
Community Food Bank. "But we deal with big picture stuff
and we'll be making general statements about the need to have
adequate and appropriate services for everybody."
Bolling said "there probably would not be a whole paragraph"
on transgender needs, and the word "transgender" "may
not" appear in the report, but he would advocate for direct
inclusion.
Birth sex only in most shelters
Many homeless shelters segregate residents based on sex, leaving
transgendered people caught in an uncomfortable double bind, Helms
told Southern Voice.
"Transgender women are being forced to present as men to
get in, and that just doesn't work most of the time," she
said. "And when they try to get into the women's shelters,
most of the time all these people see is a man in a dress."
Local homeless shelters surveyed by Southern Voice offered a range
of policies, but none said they would accept transgendered clients
without restrictions.
Founded in 1936, the Atlanta Union Mission is the largest homeless
services provider in the Southeast, providing over 2,000 meals
a day and shelter to almost 800 people a night, according to staff
members.
With close to a dozen different shelters for men, women and women
with children, Union Mission representatives said they have a
place for everyone.
But that place may hinge on several guidelines.
"We have all sorts of individuals, and where we would allow
them to be is based on how far along they are towards surgery
or what-not," said Rev. Von Wrighton, program director at
Fuqua Hall, one of the men's shelters. "If they've gone
all the way, they can go to a women's shelter. If not, they come
here."
But many transgendered people live fulltime in their new sex without
ever undergoing sex reassignment surgery, and shelter residents
said the Union Mission's rules are more clear cut.
"We go by what their natural, at-birth sex is and would not
let a man wear a dress," said the shelter's volunteer receptionist,
a resident who identified herself only as Ms. Thompson. "Someone
born a man would have to wear pants. We wouldn't let him wear
a dress."
Yet despite different interpretations by Wrighton and Thompson,
Union Mission Public Relations Director David Jones said the agency
does not have any specific rules or policies regarding transgendered
residents.
"Our shelter director says we haven't had any problems related
to transgender persons," he said. "We accept anyone
who goes by our rules."
The Task Force for the Homeless - Atlanta's second largest homeless
service provider - also requires transgendered women to present
as men, but said its policy is better than some other, smaller
shelters.
"Some actually have signs up saying 'no transvestites',"
said Anita Beatty, executive director of Task Force for the Homeless,
which runs the Peachtree and Pine shelter and several satellite
locations.
The Task Force houses approximately 700 residents each night,
Beatty said. She estimated that between 25 to 30 are male-to-female
transgendered homeless people who agree to "present"
as male each night.
"Our women's shelter's aren't really open to them,"
Beatty said.
While Atlanta has 3,000 to 4,000 beds available for the homeless
each night, more than 75 percent of those are allocated for men,
Beatty said.
The city's homeless population may number as high as 25,000, "but
we have no clue how many are transgendered," she said. "Trust
me, if anybody was counting, it would be us, and we aren't."
San Fran leads way
While Atlanta has "yet to even publicly realize they have
a discrimination problem," Helms said, other cities are "light-years"
ahead in dealing with transgendered homeless.
San Francisco offers the most progressive policies, according
to activists across the country.
In 1995, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission began a pilot
program to allow male-to-female transgendered women to enter battered
women's shelters, said Marcus Arana, a discrimination investigator
with the commission.
The transgendered women were admitted regardless of surgical or
hormonal status, Arana said, "and we went through massive
staff and resident training."
When no problems arose, the commission took the program to the
city's homeless shelters, "and one by one they came on board,"
he said.
"We've been doing this for seven years now, and it has shown
that all the fears people are still citing in other cities for
not allowing transgender residents are all phantom fears,"
he said. "Not a single man put on a dress just to get into
a women's shelter. There was no exhibitionism, no degradation."
With minimal planning for showers and changing areas, privacy
and comfort levels could be maintained for all residents of shelters,
Arana said.
Atlanta Union Mission
165 Alexander St., NW
Atlanta, GA 30313
404-588-4000
www.aumcares.org
Task Force for the Homeless
363 Georgia Ave., SE, 2nd Floor
Atlanta, GA 30312-3139
404-589-9495
www.homelesstaskforce.org