These Black transgender women are fighting housing insecurity for LGBTQ people in the South


Kayla Gore wants transgender people of color in the South to have a fighting chance.

In 2016, she and her friend Ellyahnna C. Wattshall were working at a local community center in Memphis, Tennessee, when they noticed emergency shelters were discriminating against trans people like them.
"It was just me and Ellyahnna at the (LGBTQ) community center one day," Gore told CNN. "I was working there ... and I was having a lot of frustration with the organizations that provided emergency shelter in Memphis."
Gore said she was hearing reports from local trans people that shelters were asking invasive questions about their genitalia.
"(There was) no concern for the actual people who were in an emergency situation who needed housing," Gore said.
That year, she and Wattshall created a new option: My Sistah's House, a grassroots organization that provides emergency housing and resources to LGBTQ people, and especially trans people of color.
"The desire was for My Sistah's House to be a place of refuge," Gore said.
My Sistah's House, along with providing housing, hosts clinics to educate trans people on the legal process of name changes, provides survival kits to local sex workers and offers resume coaching.
The services are "delivered by and for gender non-conforming people of color," their GoFundMe says.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/28/us/bl...rnd/index.html