While Kayla Gore was working at the LGBTQ community center in Memphis, she noticed a large number of transgender adults visiting the center in need of housing. Many had experienced discrimination while seeking help at shelters.
“They were asking about genitalia…They were concerned about the safety of the current residents at their facilities and not the safety of the person who actually needed shelter,” Gore said.
So Gore and her friend, Illyahnna C. Wattshall, decided to take matters into their own hands. They began providing temporary housing for people in their own homes.
“We know housing is a human right,” Gore said, “And we had the space, so we provided it.”
Housing continues to be a huge issue in the transgender community. According to the National Center of Transgender Equality, one in five trans people in the United States have faced discrimination while seeking a home, and more than one in ten have been evicted due to their gender identity. Additionally, one in five trans people have experienced homelessness.
Five years after Gore and Wattshall began housing people, their act of kindness has grown into a movement of its own.
Together, the pair founded My Sistah’s House, a grassroots organization dedicated to providing emergency housing to transgender people in need. Among other programs, they own a physical home purchased three years ago that can house up to four people at once.
“We’ve had folks come from Chicago, Texas, Arkansas, from the top of Tennessee and Florida, to come and seek shelter,” said Gore, who is the organization’s executive director. “It’s a good feeling, but it’s also like, wow people have to travel so far just to be safe.”
The influx of people, Gore added, is in part due to the increased publicity the organization has received as of late due to its innovative new project: building tiny homes for trans women of color, who are often the most at risk of violence and discrimination.
This summer, Gore raised $250,000 dollars for the project through a GoFundMe, which allowed the organization to purchase a 30-acre plot of land and begin work on the first three homes, which should be completed by April. The goal is to build a total of twenty. The fundraiser has now reached over $300,000, with a goal of $450,000.
Gore said the idea for the tiny home project came out of the pandemic. More and more trans people have faced housing insecurity as a result of job loss, Gore said. Temporary housing wasn’t enough. She wanted to create a more permanent solution.
“We were at max here, and were thinking, what’s a permanent solution to houselessness, and we thought about homeownership. The most feasible way to provide homeownership is tiny houses.”
The idea is catching on. Gore said many activists have reached out who want to emulate the project and added that once her own project is further off the ground, she will be happy to provide assistance and advice to others.
“People think it’s super complex, but it’s really simple,” she said. “It’s just having the passion and having an idea and making it happen.”
Throughout all of this, Gore has also been busy fighting another battle for Tennessee’s transgender community. She is currently the lead plaintiff in a case against the state regarding the ability to change one’s gender marker on their birth certificate, which Tennessee prohibits. Gore is extremely proud, she said, to be part of the lawsuit.
“One of the most significant pieces of paper we have, we can’t change it on there,” she said. “And that’s a real concern for me as an advocate.”
Gore’s biggest hope for the future of My Sistah’s House is that someday, housing won’t be an issue for the trans community and they will be able to close down.
“Hopefully,” she said, “We don’t have do this anymore.”