New York to provide separate housing for transgender people at homeless shelters in new settlement

According to the conditions recent legal agreement with Mariah Lopez, activist Strategic Alliance of Transgender People in Support of Radicals or STARR, New York City must provide separate housing as an option for transgender and non-gender homeless people in city shelters in four boroughs, reports Gothamist.

By December 2022, the city agreed to provide at least 30 transgender beds throughout the city, with locations in Brooklyn, Bronx. Queens and Manhattan. Beds, which are to provide access to single-bar toilets and showers, or to private bathrooms, can be located either in new specialized shelters or in separate blocks within existing shelters.

The agreement also includes a promise from the city to potentially add more beds for transgender people as needed in the future. Although it does not indicate what could have caused the increase. Lopez and her lawyers will receive progress reports from the city, track complaints of harassment, and visit designated shelters to assess conditions.

The trial lasted four years

The agreement was the culmination of a four-year litigation... Lopez led her mostly alone as a pro se litigator. This means that she wrote all of her legal documents herself, without the help of a lawyer. She led part of the lawsuit while living on the street after fled from the city's shelter system in 2017. On the terms of the November agreement with New York for the first time reported by Xtra magazine.

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“It wasn't easy getting to this point,” Lopez said. She said she drew inspiration from iconic trans activists such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera during an exhausting, multi-year legal battle. Lopez lived briefly with Rivera until her death in 2002 at Transy House... This is a refuge for runaway transgender teenagers in Brooklyn. “None of this will change if the matter goes away and I give in,” she told herself.

Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the City's Department of Homeless Services, confirmed the policy changes the department was implementing as part of the settlement.

“We thank Mariah Lopez for her leadership on this issue - and as we continue to do this, we intend to continue to listen to feedback from partners and advocates with the common goal of providing the most supportive and inclusive environment for all,” McGinn said.

"What would Sylvia do?"

Lopez, 36, became homeless after the death of the aunt she lived with. She entered the city's homeless system and was soon transferred to Marsha's House, a special shelter for the LGBTQ community. But, once at the shelter, she was faced with an inhospitable atmosphere.

According to original claim Lopez, filed in the Southern District of New York, employees regularly misread her or used the pronoun "it" to describe her. The lawsuit alleges that they used homophobic insults such as "fagot." They forced her and other residents of the shelter to have sexual intercourse with the threat of transferring them to another shelter if they did not comply. The conditions were so demoralizing that she returned to the streets and took up sex work in order to survive. A few months later, a relative helped her rent a room. At the time, Lopez said that she repeatedly asked herself, "What would Sylvia do?" referring to her late mentor, Rivera.

“I'm going to go to federal court and sue the damn city,” she said at the time to Lopez.

The city paid for the cost of surgery Lopez

In a separate lawsuit in 2007 the city was ordered to cover the cost of Lopez's gender reassignment surgery. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria while in FDA custody.

Her latest lawsuit prompted a plan to provide special housing for transgender people. It began with an initial complaint that DHS had denied her an emotional support animal shelter. The plan was changed after she was placed at Marsha's House with her dog.

According to legal documents, a federal judge dismissed the city's repeated attempts to close the case. In addition to the new mandate to provide shelter for transgender people, the agreement also requires shelter staff to sign nondiscrimination agreements and receive educational training on how to respectfully interact with transgender and gender non-conforming people. Both groups suffer and end up on the street much more often than cisgender people, according to data analyzed National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Lopez and her team of lawyers from Center for Constitutional Rights and LGBTQ + clinics Harvard Law, who stepped in to assist her in the settlement phase, will monitor the Department of Homeless Affairs's performance in meeting its commitments over the next five years under the terms of the agreement.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us to keep the city on track,” Lopez said, adding, “If you can find someone to live in, you can change their goddamn life.”