Service providers and advocates discovered how to avoid and prevent housing discrimination against homeless LGBT people during a workshop at Access Living, 115 W. Chicago Ave., on June 4.
Brittany Mabry, a training and education manager for the National Runaway Safeline, stressed the training's value.
"When we are talking to young people or parents, we can advocate for youth," Mabry said. "Everyone publicly to have this that knowledge would put everybody in a better place."
Lambda Legal joined forces with the Illinois Department of Human Rights, National Center for Lesbian Rights and Illinois Safe Schools Alliance to provide the training. The training began with offering the basics, including reviews of everything from sexual orientation to preferred pronouns.
"Don't make assumptions. It's not cute," Lambda Legal Community Educator Crispin Torres said. "What we're giving you here today is a set of frameworks."
Illinois Safe Schools Alliance Youth Organizer Nat Duran facilitated a group activity aimed at helping attendees learn the meanings of various terms, including homosexual, transgender and cisgender. Duran highlighted the message, with which she hoped people left.
"Everyone, no matter their identity, has a basic right to safe housing options," Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Kyle Palazzolo said while highlighting a recent legal victory for transgender people and current protections in place. Palazzolo noted new Occupational Health and Safety Administration ( OSHA ) guidelines regarding bathrooms. OSHA said workers should be able to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.
"People should be able to use the bathroom they identify with," he said.
Palazzolo pivoted the discussion about identity to delve into discrimination against homeless LGBT people. He noted youth, who identify as LGBTQIA, are still being banished from home. So, of course, they could end up in homeless. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD )'s Equal Access rule and Illinois Human Rights Act provide protection.
HUD's Guidance for Placement of Transgender Persons suggests that "providers should strongly consider" a client's identity, when coordinating placement. Speaking of identity, Palazzolo said certain markers shouldn't used to determine one's identity.
"We're trying to get away from talking about genitals when we talk about gender identity," he said.
Much of the discussion centered around how HUD-funded service providers, including homeless shelters, could avoid discriminating. However, Palazzolo highlighted the efforts to discriminate within the confines of private shelters, including faith-based homeless shelters.
Republican legislators, according to Palazzolo, tried to use their potential marriage equality support as leverage to insert "religious refusal" clauses into the Illinois Human Rights Act. Palazzolo reflected out loud on the irony of religious people trying to avoid providing people shelter.
"That seems a little antithetical to [religious beliefs]," Palazzolo said.
The Illinois Human Rights Act, of course, covers federally protected classes. They include race, sex, color, national origin or familial status.
But the state's human-rights act also prohibits discrimination based on actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality as well as any other gender-related identity. Local ordinances prohibit source income discrimination as well as, in Champaign, Illinois, outlawing discrimination based on political affiliation, personal appearance and prior arrest.
Nearly 900 LGBT discrimination charges have been filed under the auspices of the Illinois Human Rights Act since 2006. Employment discrimination accounts for 3 percent of those charges, while housing discrimination accounts for 4 percent and 10 percent involve charges of bias at public accommodations.
Cases are generally resolved within 100 days. Legal counsel is not necessary to file a charge. For more information, visit the Illinois Department of Human Rights website at www2.illinois.gov/dh. Visit Illinois Safe Schools Alliance at www.illinoissafeschools.org or Lanbda Legal at www.lambdalegal.org to learn more as well.