NYC opens first-in-the-nation homeless shelter for transgender people
“We could not be more proud to make this historic announcement which strongly affirms our values and our commitment to strengthen the safety net of transgender New Yorkers at a time when their rights are categorically attacked,” said Molly Wasow Park, commissioner of the social services department, in a statement. “ACE’s Place will offer transgender New Yorkers a safe place to heal and stabilize in informed contexts in trauma with the support of staff who is deeply invested in their growth and well-being.”
Sean Ebony Coleman, founder and CEO of Destination Tomorrow, said that Ace’s Place is a “harshly disputed statement that our transgender brothers and sisters not in accordance with gender will no longer be pushed to the margins”.
“Place d’Ace is a community -focused response to systemic negligence, and this is only the start,” Coleman said in a statement.
Trans people disproportionately experience homelessness, partly due to the confrontation of employment discrimination. The US Trans 2022 survey, the largest national survey of trans persons, with more than 90,000 respondents, revealed that 30% of respondents said they had shelter in their lives. Eleven percent of those who had already held a job have declared that they were dismissed, forced to resign, lost the post or were dismissed because of their identity or their gender expression. More than a third (34%) of respondents knew poverty.
Ace’s Place is one of the only two New York organizations to provide accommodation to adults in the LGBTQ community. Almost all LGBTQ shelters in the city are intended for people under the age of 25.
