This Is Important For The Community

A few years ago we were trying to get funding for a trans house here in Connecticut but we found it hard going to get enough support to make it a go. Even through the article is a year old it is still important for us.

OutFront: Transgender Advocate Creates Safe Space for LGBTQ Homeless
NBC
By Julie Compton
April 13, 2017

Transgender activist Ruby Corado is fighting for Washington D.C.’s most vulnerable. Known as "Mama Ruby" among the city’s LGBTQ youth, the advocate is the proud founder of Casa Ruby, a homeless shelter and advocacy organization for the LGBTQ community.

“I’m known as the person in the city who will work with those people nobody wants to touch,” Corado told NBC Out.

A transgender woman who grew up in El Salvador, Corado overcame many hardships before opening her center. In the 1980s, her father paid human traffickers to get her out of the war-torn country. She said a bus took her to Washington D.C, where traffickers gave the then 16-year-old a room and took all the money she earned working odd jobs.

For many trans people a homeless shelter is not an option, for many trans people no matter how trans friendly the shelter is they don’t feel safe there or they are concerned that they will be “outed.”

One of the problems that we have here in Connecticut is that we are a small state and I believe that we don’t have a large enough base to make it viable. It makes more sense to have shelters in large cities like New York and Boston. There are only two Pride centers here in Connecticut, one is in Norwalk and the other is in New Haven, there hasn’t been a community center in Hartford in over ten years.

I personally believe that one of the side effects of marriage equality is the lack of need for LGBT community centers and the decline of “gay” bars.