cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/63078842
Crow Harmony never felt at ease living in Florida as a transgender guy. The state has some of the most restrictive anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the country, and Harmony said he struggled to find employers willing to hire trans people. Last fall, after Harmony’s boyfriend transitioned, the couple lost their housing.
They were just 21 and 20 with no money or job prospects, so Harmony reached out to a Seattle nonprofit for help getting out of Florida. The nonprofit, a trans-led organization called Traction, welcomed the couple with a place to sleep and money for moving. But unbeknownst to Harmony, Traction was struggling, too.
Since the 2024 election, Traction has helped 1,500 trans people flee red states — more than 20 times the 70 people it aided in the 18 months before the election. And it’s just one of several Seattle nonprofits whose leaders say they don’t have the resources to help the number of trans people who’ve left their homes for the safety of the Pacific Northwest.
Though trans people make up just 1 percent of the population in Washington state, the nonprofits that help them say their budgets are drained and their staffs are stretched so thin that last month the Seattle LGBTQ Commission asked Mayor Katie Wilson (D) to declare a civil state of emergency. Such a declaration would free up general fund dollars to bolster the nonprofits’ finances as they help transplants find housing and jobs.
“The conditions,” the commission wrote in a June 2 letter to Wilson and the City Council, “are an urgent policy concern and a life-and-death matter for internal displaced persons fleeing to Seattle for safety.”
I’m a [edit: big data nerd] So… yes, I’m pretty well versed in this subject.
The issue is not that queer people can’t live here, but that people will move here because they have heard it’s culturally great for queer people and nobody mentions that it’s ungodly expensive to live here and our housing assistance programs are (in some cases quite literally) orders of magnitude beyond max capacity, so many of them become homeless or live in serious poverty as a result. That was what I called attention to in my original comment - and why I’ve been so confused as to why you brought up the possibility of living in the other nearby seattle-suburb cities. They have the same problem - there are few jobs that aren’t highly specialized, those that do exist are inundated with applications (some entry positions I have seen have had thousands of applications) and housing is scarce and absurdly expensive.
You have to be very careful before moving out here to avoid falling into the endless debt pitfalls or outright homelessness. People really need to be aware of the reality that this is a hyper-capitalist area and the disgusting realities that come with it, and be prepared to handle that.