Trans focussed training event for housing sector held on 18 October 2023.
The blurby bit
Cardboard Citizens’ production, Faun, explored how trans people are disproportionately affected by homelessness, with one in four trans people experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives (Stonewall poll in partnership with YouGov, 2018).
This panel discussion will explore the issues LGBTQ+ people face surrounding homelessness, the role of LGBTQ+ specific homelessness services and what can be done, on a policy and societal level to improve the situation.
From the Eventbrite listing
The panel
The Centre for Homelessness Impact
The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) was the hosting venue. In the 2022/23 financial year it received well over half a million pounds of public money (National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), Evaluation Accelerator Projects and Early Legal Advice Pilot are all government-backed funding streams). It also received a significant sum from Comic Relief Changemakers.
It’s ‘Test and Learn’ project is being funded by the Department of Levelling Up, and, according to the annual accounts, the total project income will be worth £15 million in total.
The Centre for Homelessness Impact describes the Test and Learn project on its website as:
Understanding what works to reduce homelessness and end rough sleeping
This is a programme of trials and evaluations to test ways to reduce homelessness and end rough sleeping and to map the homelessness and rough sleeping system, commissioned by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. We expect to have interim findings from the trials from autumn 2025.
https://www.homelessnessimpact.org/test-and-learn
‘Head of Value for Money’ is one of the team‘s job titles. Talk about twisting the knife. One of the CHI’s ‘Implementation Leads’ was on the panel.
Cardboard Citizens
Cardboard Citizens has a very plush website and says it represents anyone who ‘don’t feel like they have a home’ because of ‘lived experience’. It essentially claims to be a theatre company for the homeless and that it gives work experience and jobs to the same. The City of London, the National Lottery Community Fund and Arts Council England (£163,000 given from ACE in the last financial year) have all funded the charity. One of its staff, a female they/them, led the discussion.
Faun, the play
The lynchpin for the discussion was supposedly the play Faun, whose main character is called Ace. Vinnie Heaven (writer) and Debbie Hannan (director) are both female they/thems. Their play was commissioned by Cardboard Citizens to explore why there are ‘such high rates of homelessness in the LGBTQ+ community, but especially for trans and non-binary people’ but it was referred to only once. At the time of writing, there have been no productions since Faun was staged in March 2023.
The Outside Project
The Outside Project is ‘London’s LGBTIQ+ Community Shelter, Centre and Domestic Abuse Refuge’. Currently the team has mostly they/them pronouns. It is a non-profit Community Interest Company, apparently a Centre Point Partnering Member and has a physical building out of which it operates in Clerkenwell. Its activities aren’t strictly focused on the homeless and includes a ‘trans led, non-competitive football team for LGBTIQ+ people’ with ‘strong ‘FUCK PE’ vibes’ (in other words, they doss, fags hanging out the corners of their mouths).
akt
Always give a wide berth to any organisation which demands lower caps where upper caps should be observed. In the case of akt (previously the Albert Kennedy Trust), it was originally a charity which helped same sex attracted teens with housing problems. Nowadays, of course, it is LGBTQ+ focussed and has the heterosexual trans activist celebrity couple Hannah and Jake Graf as patrons. akt makes a lot of income from partnerships with companies such as M&S, Morrisons, Hello Fresh, Whitbread, and Pret, etc. akt claims that **’24% of young homeless people aged 16-25 identify as being LGBTQ+’ and runs a trans-specific project, helping those made homeless by ‘transphobia’. However, as both of the case studies it has published reveal, a male recipient was helped out due to domestic violence (not transphobia) and also given support ‘to change her name by deed poll, find a supportive GP to help her access gender affirming care’ – see here. The other is a confused story about a female who grew up in care* and was targeted by neighbours for ‘homophobic’ abuse (not transphobia) and thus needed to be rehoused. Again, akt helped funnel this young person into a gender identity clinic service and this is where the emphasis in the story lies and certainly what Charlie is quoted as appreciating most.
*Care leavers must be found housing by social services.
**The methodology which produced this statistic was an online survey which ‘openly recruited through akt’s social media channels’. There were only 161 participants, of which the majority had ‘sofa surfed’. Just one quarter claimed to have slept rough. (Source: Page 32 of akt’s 2021 report.)
The discussion
Introductions
A paper that the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) had produced called Sexuality, Gender Identity and Homelessness would be informing the discussion. The upshot of that paper, as explained by the CHI bod, was that they thought LGBT people were more affected by homelessness but couldn’t say categorically because there was no good statistical data available from the statutory data captured, as twenty five percent of respondents preferred not to answer the question on sexuality. Contradicting herself, she repeated the cooked statistic from akt about 24 percent of young homeless people being LGBTQ. She also claimed the recent Census had given new data around sexuality and gender identity which was ‘really really helpful’ (no mention of the survey design flaw which resulted in a court case or that one in 67 Muslims are trans, obviously)*. It was known that the LGBTQ population was more likely to use substances but what about those also experiencing housing issues? Well, it sounded like she didn’t have a clue. One conclusion the research was able to confidently make though, was that support workers needed more training in dealing with the alphabet bag. How queer!
*Subsequent to writing this, the ONS was forced to request a reclassification of its 2021 gender identity estimates from “official statistics” to “official statistics in development”.
A summary of the play Faun was given; it is kept secret from the audience why Ace (the main character) is made homeless. Ace sofa surfs, gradually turning into a faun due to trauma response then goes into the queer forest to find their queer elders. The queer forest was ‘basically The Outside Project actually’. So, there you go, a real metaphor.
The woman from akt was a youth worker but had also done case work. She explained the history of the charity; i.e. it was set up by a ‘straight cis woman’ for ‘the LGBTQ+ person’ she had fostered (actually a gay teen known as Albert Kennedy). Prior to covid there was only twenty staff but had now swelled to sixty. She claimed that during the first part of the pandemic referrals went up four times and had stayed continuously high. Conveniently this meant there was a lot of work to do. Now that she was no longer a caseworker her focus was on ‘wellbeing stuff’, which essentially sounded like organising social groups. The organisation aspired to being ‘youth-led’. I suspect this is why they changed the acronym to lower caps to prove to da kids that they karnt be bovvered iver.
The young man from the Outside Project was trans-identified. He whinged about how little the Mayor of London had done for the queer homeless, whereas the Outside Project had set up a winter night shelter with just a crowdfund, thereby utterly embarrassing the Mayor.
So, I looked into this claim. And it turns out the winter shelter is Status Quo’s ex-tour bus and has space for just 12 beds (see the NBC news story here). I will point out the glaringly obvious; this does not meet the standards legally required of a HMO.
Last year, Ecola created The Outside Project, the U.K.’s first LGBTQ homeless crisis shelter. Using some of the £11,500 ($14,827) raised from a crowdfunding campaign, she bought a 12-bed bus — the former tour bus of English rock band Status Quo — to house some of London’s most vulnerable LGBTQ homeless residents.
“We put up flowers, flags, fairy lights, queer literature and art everywhere to make it nice for guests,” Ecola explained.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/following-successful-pilot-project-u-k-will-get-permanent-lgbtq-n904526
According to the Outside Project’s website, currently their shelter Anira House (I believe this is one and the same) is only accessible to those who ‘do not meet the criteria or feel unable to access existing services’ and they also ‘do not accept agency referrals, national or international self referrals or operate a waiting list’ for the shelter (my emphases). Nuff said.
The Outside Project had gone from ‘squatting’ in an old fire station in Farringdon, where they had also lived. During covid the Project had helped people with housing but also ‘bridging prescriptions for hormones’. The project worker’s role was varied, including being the football team’s coach. He was also able to share his unique insight that the more the people ‘at the top’ hated you, the more you would struggle at ground level. A profoundly persuasive point coming from a thoroughly middle class tosser.
The woman from akt, whilst describing the situation that homeless LGBTQ people found themselves in, said ‘like’ a lot (sometimes several times in a row), whilst finishing her sentences as if asking a question, where there were none. In other words, she was completely bullshitting. The point she really wanted to make though was that trans people were affected most by various precarities.
How do you pick apart the multiple problems facing LGBTQ youths?
This question clearly stumped the panel as they struggled to think of one single example but ultimately decided it all boiled down to hostility outside the group. One of the youth workers managed to mention that the Prime Minister had recently said ‘some transphobic things’ but then completed clammed up. ‘It’s a big question, it’s a hard question,’ opined another and that more data was needed, but went onto to assert that LGBTQ youths were ‘resource poor’ in terms of family connections, inferring that huge swathes were given the boot from the family home once they’d dyed their hair blue and declared preferred pronouns. Such data was very hard to capture and prevention very difficult.
Why do LGBTQ homeless youths need a specific service?
Erm, um, erm, um, said one of the youth workers, trans people need to self-medicate and therefore need a bespoke needle exchange and advice on avoiding unsafe practices. Erm, um, said the other, like, LGBTQ people should like have access to the mainstream services but like have to make do with specific services instead, which are like far less well funded (and directly contradicted by akt’s massive expansion). Pushed further to give an example, we were told that a person seeking help had been turned away the week before because they were straight. The moderator was quick to turn the point round and say that mainstream services hadn’t done enough training so didn’t look diverse enough, though unable to explain why a cis het normie would be intimidated. (By-the-by Shelter’s main office in London has been covered with rainbow and trans tricolor stickers since Ruth Hunt got on board in 2018, so the point is utterly false.) The virtue of lanyards, flags and pronouns were extolled.
One alleged that she had been told trans people had been kept out of hostels for their own safety, and, although this had come from a good place, it also meant that the refuge had refused a service to someone. Of course, no specifics were given, and you might wonder why such a contentious decision, at least against the spirit of the 2010 Equality Act, had happened several times over and never been taken up by the various activists primed to do just that.
How have things changed over the last two years post-covid?
People had to live in houseshares which were transphobic. Guess what? Houseshares with other trans people were a nightmare too. No way! The Outside Project was sometimes able to give service users the money for a deposit and a month’s rent but they only gave that on the basis that they knew the person could continue to make rent moving forward. In other words, they were giving handouts to people already in work, given landlords require references, therefore highly unlikely to be truly homeless.
Being trans meant feeling unsafe, which meant fewer options, whereas ‘cis people’ found it so much easier to get on the housing ladder, it was claimed. Another felt that if only the Tories could do their job for like a week, then that would completely change the Tories and then like they wouldn’t be Tories anymore. Transphobia and homophobia were a lot worse, yeah, but like also you could get someone into trouble with management if they say the wrong thing. Which was pretty cool. ‘Precarity’ was the one consistent feature.
What is the one policy change that you would make?
We need more data so that we know how to respond, said the CHI bod. It was acknowledged this didn’t answer the question, but anyhoo she didn’t feel that policy was that bad. The male youth worker said to be trans in the UK was to be under constant scrutiny and constant questioning, which meant that people didn’t want to answer questions about their identity and would choose ‘prefer not to say’ instead. He also couldn’t answer the question about policy beyond saying he thought renting properties for profit should be illegal. It all seemed to suggest that homeless queer people didn’t have any unique problems.
The woman from akt claimed that local authorities did not take cases of LGBT domestic abuse seriously, no matter how many lawyers intervened. In terms of policy, she wanted a ‘wraparound system’ where clients simply got whatever they asked for via Housing First principles. The success rates for this approach are apparently ‘mad’ but I did note she failed to mention what the cost was. Currently this service was only available for those who had experiencing ‘entrenched homelessness’ but she wanted it to be available for everyone.
Q&A
What is the most joyful part of your job?
The audience, finger on the pulse as always, were focussed on the positive things. Working with people who want to make a difference, said one project worker. Working with amazing weirdo queerdos, said the other, and that it mainly gave him a chance to doss.
What can we do to help LGBTQ+ people experiencing homelessness?
Donate to our charities. Give up your spare room, if you have one, because the state has completely forsaken us. The arts can change the world and getting our stories out there can make such a massive difference (no mention of Faun though, the supposed inspiration for the event, I suspect no one had seen it, or had and thought it was shit).
Twenty six percent of LGBTQ people had reported having suicidal thoughts, compared to 4 percent of heterosexual people. The person posing the question couldn’t remember where that statistic had come from but wanted to know if there was a link to homelessness.
Yes and it was very very bad out there.
Are you receiving enough support to cope?
Union support was required and the St Mungo’s strike mentioned (with Unite’s support, employees had had a partially successful payout, meeting the full demands would have bankrupted the charity). Another had got completely burnt out and had signed off work for two months and now spent most of their wages on therapy. The Tories had been in power for fifteen years and the crushing weight of austerity was too much to bear.
What would you like the general public, who haven’t experienced homelessness, to know about the work you do?
There was a lot of inequality in homelessness and it was a myth (one I’ve never heard) that anyone could become homeless. People also didn’t understand what homelessness is and only thought of it as rough sleeping but it was so much more complex. Sofa surfing, for example, was a very valid form of homelessness. You get what you deserve was a dominant British cultural narrative which had literally come from the divine right of Kings. We live in a society of profound bootlickers. Something something Rishi Sunak. If we were all made homeless, we would be completely fucked. Erm, quite.
A very long question about research and outcomes.
Which took a couple minutes to ask. It wasn’t clear what was being asked, so the moderator rephrased it. It still no made no sense but the panel tried to answer, as if they had understood. Painful. It was like listening to a thesaurus being read out, as people did their best to sound erudite.
Conclusion
God help the homeless drug addicts this lot might occasionally encounter, as I have never heard so many ums, ahs, erms and likes. They could barely string a sentence together. And so gormless, they forgot the obligatory mention of the trans sex worker. Unforgivable.
Of course, the major factor overwhelmingly affecting rough sleepers is drug abuse. We all know this. Looking through the stories on St Mungo’s website, most have had problems with hard drugs or alcoholism, many also care leavers. The issue of being ‘LGBT+’ doesn’t crop up once. Never mind though, the CHI is being paid like a gazillion pounds to find this out and will be ready to share the interim findings with government in Autumn 2025. Shame the money couldn’t have gone directly to addiction support services.
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