www.archpaper.com
The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on sex and gender identity. But today, state and federal officials are enacting policies many say exacerbate housing discrimination against transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people. Directives in Utah, at the Department of Housing and Urban Design (HUD), and elsewhere have sounded alarm bells for LGBTQIA+ advocates who work in the housing sector. To help protect these communities, new housing in Texas, New York, and elsewhere is getting built for LGBTQIA+ individuals and seniorsa demographic much more likely to face housing discrimination than their non-LGBTQIA+ peers. How else are architects and educators responding to the civil rights crisis?HB 269 in UtahThe first transgender restrictive legislation explicitly aimed at university housing was passed this month in Utah. The bill, HB 269, was approved by the Utah State House, and then signed by Governor Spencer Cox; it requires students to live in dormitories consistent with their gender assigned at birth. ACLU Utah has long fought HB 269, which it called invasive and anti-trans.AIA Utah issued a statement against the bill, an opposition effort helmed by AIA Utah president Whitney Ward and Julia Oderda, a local architect and trans rights advocate, who has a board seat at AIA Utah. Oderda told AN that HB 269 sets a really awful, dangerous precedent that legalizes housing discrimination. Oderda added, not allowing trans people to live in dorms that align with their gender, and making them live with the gender assigned at birth, forces them into dangerous situations. Trans people have a higher rate of abuse than cis people, Oderda noted, so they need access to these spaces.ACLU Utah said HB 269 is the fourth consecutive legislative attack on Utahs trans youths; the first came in 2022 with HB11, which addressed student athlete participation in gender-designated sports. Subsequent bills enforced rules about bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings, and limited access to gender-affirming care. Now that Governor Cox has approved HB 269, public Utah universities and colleges will have to assign housing based on students biological sex at birth, something ACLU Utah argues will lead to increased drop-out rates, among other issues. Leah Wulfman is an architecture professor at University of Utah who recently contributed to Out in Architecture, an anthology of texts by LGBTQIA+ architects and educators. Wulfman said these policy directives are anti-educational, as they make for unsafe learning environments and put students and faculty at risk.Utah is a very specific case, but its also a prototype of whats going to happen on the federal level, Wulfman told AN. This sort of sex designation is devastating because, not only does it erase the actual existence of people that are trans and non-conforming, but its also anti-working class. In architecture and within academia, at what point do you just not comply?Student housing at University of Utah (Mangoman88/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)Publicly controlled gender affirming services are important resources in Utah, a state in which one in three residents are Mormon, a religious and cultural group that has historically leaned anti-LGBTQIA+. This means that secular institutions like public colleges and universities remain some of the few places where trans, queer, and non-binary students can go for support.Moving forward, Oderda hopes to see more architects stand up for trans rights. Several laws have come out these past few years that just keep getting increasingly bad, laws which target the LGBTQ community, and climate action. At AIA Utah weve been trying to advocate on behalf of our profession as advocates for the public. So for [HB 269], the board drafted opposition language and submitted it to legislators.The letter AIA Utah penned in opposition to HB 269 was addressed to Utah Representative Stephanie Gricius and Senator Brady Brammer. It was reviewed by AN. AIA Utah said its concerns were in relation to the harm HB 269 could inflict on LGBTQIA+ individuals and its detrimental effect on Utahs ability to attract and retain talent in our growing economy. AIA Utah cited workforce shortages in Salt Lake City and argued that anti-LGBTQIA+ directives like HB 269 will contribute to the states brain drain: Architecture and design depend on attracting the best talent, AIA Utah wrote, yet measures like this make Utah a less welcoming place for transgender individuals, their families and friends, and those who support them.While the stated intent of [HB 269] is to preserve privacy, the approach it takes is unnecessarily punitive toward transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming individuals, who are explicitly excluded from being recognized under its provisions, AIA Utah continued. The bill assumes these individuals pose a harm, despite the absence of evidence supporting such claims. In reality, current policies already provide avenues for students to request housing accommodations if privacy concerns arise. This legislation does not solve a documented problem; rather, it creates new burdens for a vulnerable segment of the student population.In her work as an architect, Oderda steadfastly affirms that trans rights are something architects should support. [HB 269] is a housing issue, and as architects we deal with housing, right? When I talk to the public or clients, I always say we as architects have multiple clients, Oderda told AN. We have the people who are paying for the building, and we have the people who are using the building. All of the different groups that make up society at-large are who we need to think about, and if we dont speak up on behalf of those groups, who else will? Its our duty to speak up. Federal Anti-Trans ActionsAt the federal level, on February 7, Scott Turner, the new Trump-appointed HUD director, repealed the 2016 Equal Access Rule, which shielded trans people from discrimination at homeless shelters. Turner cited Biblical scripture when explaining his rationale. The National Low Income Housing Coalition said HUDs decision will adversely impact LGBTQIA+ youths, a demographic twice as likely to experience houselessness than their non-LGBTQIA+ peers. Turner has also been ordered to lay off half of HUDs staff, putting affordable housing and disaster relief efforts in jeopardy.HUD director Scott Turner and Donald Trump (The White House/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)AN contributor Adrienne Economos Miller, a University of WisconsinMilwaukee architecture professor whose research weaves labor histories, cultural and literary studies, and queer and trans theory, has been closely monitoring anti-trans legislation and what it means for architecture. The 2016 Equal Access Rule was predicated on a study that found 22 percent of trans people in homeless shelters segregated by their birth sex reported sexual assault, Miller told AN. This return to the pre-Obama era will cause direct harm, particularly to trans women, but also trans people in general that are forced into sex-segregated spaces that dont match with their actual sex. For Miller and Wulfman, the playbook from Utah and HUD could be replicated across the country, putting already marginalized people in greater danger. The HUD rules about shelters are expandable to any HUD funded program, Miller said, which means the ability to discriminate based on sex or gender identity could expand into other spheres of domesticity, like public housing. Miller noted HB 269 and HUDs repeal arrived amid a wave of other anti-trans initiatives across the U.S.Today, the military no longer provides gender-affirming care, nor does it now allow trans people to join its ranks; and federal prisons have been re-segregated, placing incarcerated individuals in spaces according to their assigned birth sex. The attacks recall the 1930s, when Nazi Germany persecuted trans people en masse.Language about who Stonewall National Monument honors was recently changed after an executive order was issued by Trump. (Fulbert/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)Earlier this month, the National Park Service (NPS) removed language about trans people from its Stonewall National Monument website. Previously, NPS said Stonewall was a monument for those who identify as LGBTQ+. Now, NPS has dropped the T and the plusNPS says the monument is only indebted to lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) people. The change happened after the January 20 executive orders implementation which Trump claims is about defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government. In Millers view, these directives should be read with an economic lens: She argues the countrys plummeting birthrates fuel the anti-trans and misogynist policy choices underway today, as well as the drive to control womens bodies more broadly. Anti-feminist politics like this reinforces the idea that women are just biological units for reproduction, and nothing else, Miller said.In an undated memo covered widely at the beginning of the month, for instance, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) secretary Sean Duffy encouraged DOT employees to prioritize districts that have marriage and birth rates higher than the national average. This reproductive incentive harkens to modern-day Russia, namely its Order of Parental Glory, a 2008 decree by the Putin administration which rewards parents for having large families with a free trip to the Kremlin, and a trophy.Vladimir Putin bestowing the Order of Parental Glory upon Irina and Vladimir Tsarev circa 2015 (Presidential Press and Information Office/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)These policies are being presented as defense against predators. Politicians say this is about keeping women safe. Ideologically, this plays well to a certain base, Miller elaborated, but I think all of these thingsthe anti-trans initiatives at HUD, in Utah, in prisons, and in the militaryare really just symbols of hyper-neoliberal policy. Protecting people from trans women is about cutting government spending and increasing birthrates for the sake of the American economy. Its a smokescreen for privatization.
