Add your voice: A Houston TG Center?

Cristan

The TFA Board will be meeting this month and one of the things the Board will  discuss is the short-term and long-term future for a transgender center in  Houston.

Before going further with this post, I want to address a criticism of the  very idea of a TG Center in Houston. The criticism goes something like this,  “Why spend all that money on a center when it could go to help pay for hormones,
rent and utility assistance programs? A TG Center is a waste of money.”

Here’s my response:

Programs that help people with rent, medical, legal, life expenses are
incredibly expensive – way more expensive than a center. In order to fund
the programs the TG community needs, we need access to very deep pockets –
the kind of million dollar funding that comes from government grants. For
instance, the TG Housing program costs around 1 million a year for 52
households. Getting that kind of funding without a public face is difficult.
When we got that money through HACS, HACS had a “TG Center” at the old HACS
Center. For those of you who don’t remember, here’s a video
of the HACS “TG Center” from 2007
.

Here’s a picture of the grand opening ribbon cutting press event for the
HACS “TG Center:

In short: Having a TG Center + TG services = access to more TG funding
for more TG Services. Having a TG Center speaks to one’s ability to deliver
services in a culturally competent manner, provides a professional face to
TG service needs and proves that an organization has easy access to the TG
Community – a community that is notoriously difficult to document, service
and impact (in the context of service provider circles).

Within the last few months, TFA has raised close to $100,000 in grants
for TG services and this was largely contingent upon to our status as having
had a TG Center. In other words, without a center, it becomes next to
impossible to access the type of funding the community needs.

To make it even more clear:

Before TG Centers in Houston, TG community funding = ~ $50,000
After TG Centers in Houston, TG community funding = > $3,000,000

Houston has lead the country in pulling down TG Community funding over
the past 3 years.

So, knowing that this is the reality of the way things work, what I want to know is…

I’ll be posting this on transhouston, facebook and to the lists so that  written community opinions can become part of the community record in the  decision making process concerning the future of a TG Center in Houston.

Thanks for your response!

Cristan

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