TRANSFORMINGCOMMUNITYOUTREACH

ANewModel: ServiceasOutreach

Challenges facing LGBTQ individuals often go underreported, preventing policymakers from accurately assessing and responding to the community’s needs. Decades of erasure and explicit discrimination from all levels of government, as well as nonprofit service providers, have contributed to a distrustofestablishmentinstitutionsamongmanyLGBTQcommunitymembers.

Various community outreach initiatives have been created to reduce the underreporting of LGBTQ issues. However, some models of community outreach, while well-intentioned, seem to prioritize the unilateral extraction of data from queer and trans people, which may further exacerbate distrust. Fair housing agencies and providers who wish to be effective in expanding their work with queer populations should recognize these historic dynamics and takeaffirmativestepstobuildtrust.

FreeName& GenderMarker ChangeClinics

Hearing from our community partners that the most frequently requested legal need in the St. Louis trans community was assistance with obtaining legal name changes, and recognizing the housing access implications of not having accurate government IDs, EHOC’s legal staff partnered with a queer community organization to provide this requested service as a form of communityoutreach.

In partnership with the all-volunteer St.Louis NameChangeMutualAid, in 2022, EHOC began incorporating on-the-spot, walk-up legal name and gender marker change clinics into our informational booths at regional Pride festivals. Importantly, EHOC’s trained staff centered trans-affirming practices and demonstrated queer cultural competency, and individuals who took advantage of the name change services were more inclined to discuss other housing barriers that they had faced.

While receiving name change assistance, community members informed EHOC staff of past housing problems, including illegal evictions based on gender transition, difficulties reflecting name changes on deeds, and a lost housing voucher due to name discrepancies.

In an ever-evolving political and social climate, meeting LGBTQ community needs requiresfairhousingorganizationstospottrendsandinterveneearlybydistributing updatededucationalmaterialsandanchoringcollaborativeadvocacywork.

CaseStudy: MpoxOutbreak