Housing & Shelter

TLDEF works to protect transgender people from housing discrimination.  Some landlords refuse to rent apartments to transgender tenants.  Real estate brokers will steer transgender people away from certain properties.  Transgender people already living in an apartment may face harassment by landlords or even eviction from their apartments.

Transgender people are also disproportionately unemployed and poor as a result of employment discrimination.  For many, homelessness results.  Homeless transgender people face unique obstacles in accessing shelter.  Shelters are often segregated by sex, with little thought given to placement of transgender people.  Shelter authorities may insist on housing a transgender person based upon his or her birth gender, rather than the gender with which he or she identifies.  Such policies force homeless transgender people into often dangerous – and always uncomfortable – situations where they are housed with individuals who share their birth sex instead of being housed according to their gender identity and expression.  Forced into such situations, many people choose homelessness over the harassment and danger often presented by inappropriate housing situations.