Residents Ask Kent to End Transgender Housing Discrimination

Advocates for the LGBTQ community challenged the City of Kent to approve legislation to ban housing discrimination against transgender individuals during a City Council meeting on Wednesday, March 15.

Transgender residents, along with friends and community members, reintroduced a measure which would protect trans individuals against housing discrimination in Kent. The bill was previously proposed to council, but was thrown out. Council stated the bill was not within their legislation and one member argued that, “in this current political climate, it would be disastrous.”

“This political climate is the time in which we need to take action the most,” said Kent State student Susan Stanek.

“I need you to understand that our identities mean so much more to us than politics and we don’t have the luxury of not being who we are depending on the political climate, added Kent State student Rachel Mattice.

Mattice came to Kent seeking refuge from a community which was not welcoming or accepting of her gender identity. “When I was 16, I was kicked out of my house for coming out to my parents as bi-sexual. So I understand how important housing is.”

[pullquote class=”alignleft”]“Transgender people have a right to shelter, and you can’t just force them out on the basis that their gender does not match the genitalia that they were born with,” said Kent State student Susan Stanek.[/pullquote]

“Once I moved here, this was the first time that I could be who I was, love who I want to and was accepted by a lot of people. So because of that, it’s really important to me that the trans students who are coming to this school and are living in this community feel just as protected and just as accepted as I did,” she said.

“I have received—from the community of Kent—a great outpouring of support and love. My neighbors have just been absolutely fantastic and I feel so fortunate to live in, what I like to refer to as, ‘this little bubble’ of Kent,” claimed Rob Ullinger.

Rob, or ‘Bobbi’ and her family have been residents of Kent for the past 39 years. Her five children attended school in Kent and she spent her entire 26 year career working for the Kent Fire Department—prior to coming out as a woman. She joked, “most of you know me on that side of the room as Rob, many of the people on this side know me as Bobbi.”

“It’s a shame that the city is not willing to put their names behind these fantastic people that live here. That they’re not willing to make a statement that we support everybody—that we support rights for everybody,” she added.

Many in the transgender community are constant victims of discrimination, mistreatment and are denied basic amenities. Others, like Kent State student Allen ‘Alice’ Freitas, have chosen to take a stand for the transgender community.

Alice is the President of ‘Trans*Fusion,’ a group of trans-identified students, which meets every Thursday at the Kent Student Center. ‘Trans*Fusion’ is seen as a safe haven for transpeople and welcomes anyone hoping to educate themselves about the transgender community and the hardships they endure.

“I see, coming through our doors every year, the people who are escaping abusive situations. People who have been kicked out of their homes. People who have had everything taken away from them but the clothes on their backs. From that point, they have to fight for everything that they get. In this state, we can even be denied loans, based on who we are,” said Freitas.

Congress has been slow to pass legislation to protect the trans community against discrimination based upon gender identity. No current federal laws exist to specifically provide protection for transpeople and few federal protections are potentially available.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment declares that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction “the equal protection of the laws.”  However, constitutional protections only cover discrimination or mistreatment by the government, not by private businesses or individuals.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex (among other characteristics) by an employer with 15 or more employees.” This article does not address transgender people specifically and is therefore open to interpretation. It also does nothing to prevent discrimination of transpeople by employers with less than 15 employees. This can have an enormous, negative impact on transpeople living in smaller, less-populated areas.

[pullquote]The U.S. National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) discovered that, of the 6456 respondents: 46 percent of trans men and 42 percent of trans women have attempted suicide.[/pullquote]

Discrimination cases have been left up to individual states and municipalities to decide. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia”—all have laws with varying levels of protection.

Ohio offers no non-discrimination protections for LGBT people.  We are one of only four remaining states that do not allow transgender individuals to update the gender marker on their birth certificates to match their true identity.

The others being Kansas, Tennessee and Idaho. Twenty eight states require medical proof of sterilization by sex reassignment surgery in order to warrant a gender marker change and only 18 states do not require sexual reassignment surgery to alter the gender identity on a birth certificate.

That means transpeople are forced to undergo expensive, complicated, potentially deadly surgical procedures they may not even want, just to receive the legal validation that the person they are inside matches their physical anatomy outside.  The continued existence of these barbaric, backwards policies are directly responsible for transgender suicides.

The U.S. National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) discovered that, of the 6456 respondents: 46 percent of trans men and 42 percent of trans women have attempted suicide. By comparison, only 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population reports attempting suicide in their lifetime. 45 percent of transpeople, ages 18-44, say they have attempted suicide.

The survey found that, “collectively, these findings suggest that not being recognized by others as transgender or gender non-conforming may function as a protective factor for suicidal behavior.

The NTDS also found that 69 percent of these individuals experienced homelessness.

“Transgender people have a right to shelter, and you can’t just force them out on the basis that their gender does not match the genitalia that they were born with,” said Kent State student Susan Stanek.

“For those hundreds of youths that come through every year—to this city—that make this city their refuge, their place of strength, the place where they can become the people they want to be…give them every chance that they can possibly get, to live the way they want to live and be treated just as everyone else,” plead Freitas.

Kent City Council did not rule on the bill during the meeting, but Mayor and President of Council Jerry T. Fiala stated that the legalities of the proposed legislation will be discussed, before deciding one way or the other. Fiala and fellow members of council echoed their support of the legislation, and acknowledged the need to further educate themselves on the issue.

It remains to be seen whether the City of Kent will be the first to establish a precedent in support of its transgender community, or, like many others, end up on the wrong side of history.

Members of the LGBTQ community address the Kent city council about trans housing rights at tonight’s city council meeting pic.twitter.com/AP3JlxYfEl

— Alexandria (@amkobryn1) March 16, 2017