HUD Statement - July 2020
On July 24, 2020, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed a rule that would remove equal access protections for transgender and gender non-conforming (T/GNC) individuals who are seeking housing in HUD-funded programs.
We echo Equality NC, the NC Coalition to End Homelessness, and other community partners across the state who advocate for LGBTQ liberation, in vehemently opposing this proposed rule. The impacts of this rule on the transgender community would be numerous and profoundly harmful.
This proposed HUD rule allows discrimination against trans people, as it would allow single-gender housing facilities to determine a person’s eligibility for housing access to be based solely on their sex assigned at birth, which the proposed rule refers to as ‘biological sex’, instead of that person’s gender identity. This proposed rule would roll back protections from earlier HUD rules in 2016. In practice, this proposed rule means that single-gender facilities could use excess and biased discretion to deny shelter to transgender people based their assumptions of that person’s assigned sex at birth, referred to in the policy as as “actual or perceived gender-related characteristics.” Under this new rule, shelter staff are also permitted to ask invasive questions to “determine” a person’s sex assigned at birth.