Discrimination Is Driving Transgender Homelessness. Federal Policy Is Making It Worse.

New Survey Data from 92,000 Respondents Reveals How Anti-Transgender Stigma and Federal Rollbacks Widen the Housing Gap

One in three transgender people in the United States has experienced homelessness. More than half have been turned away from shelter because of their gender. And the federal government’s response has been to make it easier to discriminate against them.

New survey data released by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and Advocates 4 Trans Equality offers the most comprehensive look yet at the link between discrimination and housing instability for transgender and gender-expansive people. Of the 92,000 participants, 1 in 14 reported experiencing homelessness in the past 12 months, 58% had been denied shelter access due to their gender, and 27% left shelter because of poor treatment. Nearly all reported experiencing abusive treatment while homeless.

Discrimination Is a Direct Path to Homelessness

For many transgender and gender-expansive people, the path to homelessness begins at home.

According to the NAEH/A4TE survey, family rejection and being forced to leave home are among the most common reasons transgender people lose housing, typically at a young age, and typically without a support system to fall back on. From there, discrimination follows. Research suggests that stigma experienced in schools and workplaces makes it significantly harder for transgender individuals to find and keep employment and housing.

Data from the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey found that being visibly identified as transgender was itself a determining factor, the more apparent a person’s gender identity was to others, the greater their risk of losing housing. And once homelessness occurs, discrimination in shelter access, healthcare, and employment makes it harder to leave, contributing to higher rates of chronic and long-term homelessness.

The Policy Environment Has Only Gotten Worse

The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 529 anti-LGBTQ+ bills during the 2026 legislative session. Increased economic uncertainty, cuts to programs like food assistance, and rollbacks of LGBTQ protections have compounded the risks identified in the survey. And the administration in Washington has shown little interest in reversing course.

Instead of working to address systemic discrimination, the Trump Administration has chosen to make it worse. Through attempts at rescinding the Equal Access Rule, the already limited rights for LGBTQ+ individuals hang in the balance.

In addition to no longer enforcing the Equal Access Rule, the Trump administration seeks to require homeless service providers to actively discriminate against transgender or gender-expansive people and withhold funding from those who refuse.

Advocates say this will make it harder for transgender women, youths, and people experiencing domestic violence to access critical shelter and services.

“The Trump Administration would rather you didn’t notice that it’s enabling housing discrimination against the LGBTQ community by quietly removing sexual orientation and gender identity from its list of protected characteristics,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren told The Advocate.

Warren noted that HUD’s proposed rule goes even further than the president’s executive order directed, striking “sexual orientation” from HUD regulations entirely, a move she described as so sweeping it appeared the administration was hoping no one would catch it.

The practical effect is straightforward: service providers that refuse to discriminate against transgender people risk losing the federal funding that keeps their doors open.

Without Protections, the Risks Are Stark

While homeless individuals experience high rates of violence, illness, and death, those numbers are even higher for transgender and gender-expansive individuals. Other surveys have indicated that 60% of homeless people have chronic health issues such as hypertension, while almost half suffer from depression. For transgender and gender-expansive individuals who face discrimination not only in homelessness services but also in healthcare settings, the outcome can be even worse.

According to the new data from the NAEH/A4TE survey, almost 60% of homeless transgender or gender-expansive individuals have considered suicide, compared to the 38% who have not experienced homelessness.

Those outcomes are not inevitable. They are the direct result of policies that strip away protections and force vulnerable people out of the systems designed to help them. And the rollbacks are not limited to the Equal Access Rule.

BIPOC Transgender People Face the Steepest Consequences

Laws that protect against systemic discrimination have historically been put in place to protect BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or People of Color) individuals. While not all are explicitly about race, rolling back discrimination protections will ultimately harm these groups most.

That is not a coincidence. Indigenous and Black transgender people carry the compounded weight of racial discrimination layered on top of anti-transgender stigma, making stable housing harder to reach and harder to hold onto.

Data from the survey reflects that reality: 50% of indigenous transgender participants and 39% of black transgender participants experienced homelessness during their lifetime, compared with 30% of respondents of all other races.

HUD Is Dismantling the Rules That Made Fair Housing Enforceable

Fair Housing enforcement, such as the Equal Access Rule, protects marginalized groups from systemic discrimination.

Historically, Fair Housing enforcement has helped women obtain safe and affordable housing by providing legal protections against discriminatory housing practices that would otherwise restrict women’s ability to rent, obtain a mortgage, and obtain safe and stable housing. Barriers to housing are even greater for women of color, women with disabilities, low-income women with children, and LGBTQ+ women.

In addition to attacks on the Equal Access Rule, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced a plan “to end the agency’s use of disparate-impact theory in fair housing and related civil rights enforcement” and to send these critical protections to “the ash heap of history.”

Under the Trump Administration, HUD is stepping back from its role of enforcing the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA) by rescinding the disparate impact rule. But it doesn’t stop there. HUD has also dismissed investigations into systemic housing discrimination and segregation and terminated hundreds of employees, including those in its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.

While on the surface, these attacks may appear directed only at transgender people, they are more dangerous than they seem and more widespread than they appear. Without these protections, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and other marginalized groups face even larger barriers, not only to housing but to shelter and other life-sustaining services as well.

Homelessness among transgender people is not a coincidence. It is a documented outcome of discrimination in families, in workplaces, in shelters, and now, increasingly, in federal policy. The question is whether the systems meant to protect the most vulnerable will be allowed to do their job.