The Equal Access Rule is a federal regulation intended to ensure that programs funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are open to all eligible individuals and families regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. It was updated in 2016 to strengthen protections for people who identify as transgender. *

On July 23, 2020, HUD proposed a change to the Equal Access Rule that would allow emergency shelters to create policies to refuse admission to people whose gender identities do not match their biological sex.

We want to be clear: at the Coalition for the Homeless, we believe trans rights are human rights, and we strongly oppose the proposed changes to the Equal Access to Housing rule because the rule change would allow shelters to refuse services to people who are trans and gender non-conforming. Our goal is to create a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring, and that cannot happen when trans people are singled out and denied services.

The proposed rule change is abhorrent. Safe access to shelter is truly a matter of life and death for people who are transgender; trans people are at a higher risk of experiencing violence. Also, national data from the 2019 Point-In-Time Homeless Count shows that homeless trans adults are more likely to be unsheltered (63%) than cisgender adults experiencing homelessness (49%), which suggests there are already barriers to accessing shelter for this population.

The protections provided under the Equal Access rule are critical to ensuring safe access to shelter for people who are transgender; the proposed changes to the rule would allow shelters to turn trans people away, putting them at serious risk of harm.

While housing trans people according to their gender identity does not pose a safety issue to others, failing to do so puts transgender people in danger.

Transgender people experiencing homelessness in Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties

At the local level, according to the data in our Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), 215 (or 0.4%) of the approximately 55,000 people served by our homeless response system — and 37 (0.4%) of the approximately 10,000 served by a local shelter — in 2019 identified as trans or gender non-conforming.

It’s important to remember that, because trans people face discrimination and violence as a result of their gender identity, they may be reluctant to volunteer information about themselves. For the same reason, trans people may be reluctant to seek out shelter or services from the homeless response system if they feel that they are not wanted or welcomed.

As a result, we believe these numbers under-represent the number of trans people experiencing homelessness in our region because of the stigma they face. National data suggests that 1 of 3 transgender people experience homelessness at some point in their lifetime, as compared with approximately 1 of 500 cisgender men.

However, the size of a given population is beside the point; emergency shelters provide a basic human need — shelter — in the face of a housing crisis. Everyone should have the right to access that service.