Fable Burley was one of dozens of housing and LGBTQ-rights activists gathered outside the Pond House Cafe in West Hartford’s Elizabeth Park Thursday.
Burley and other members of her group held signs advocating for expanding eviction protections and passed out fliers detailing the high eviction rates for LGBTQ renters.
“It's often hard to tell whether you've been evicted because you're trans,” Burley said. “They don't have to explain why, right? So it's hard to prove these things.”
LGBTQ renters are more likely to experience housing insecurity, Burley said. Transgender renters are 2.4 times more likely to be housing insecure when compared to cisgender renters, according to a DataHaven survey.
Transgender and queer individuals often face a lack of social and familial support, and may lose their jobs as a result of their gender or sexuality, leading to financial and housing instability.
It’s illegal to evict or fire someone based on their gender identity or sexuality, but proving that requires access to resources many don’t have, Burley said.
“Oftentimes we're just struggling to survive and figure out where we're going to sleep that night, how we're gonna eat,” Burley said. “We don't have time to be reaching out to various groups to try to get representation for that.”
Burley, a member of the transgender resource group Trans Haven, along with the Connecticut Tenants Union (CTTU), was calling out the Connecticut Apartment Association (CTAA), a landlord and property management group.
CTAA held an event Thursday morning promoting LGBTQ involvement in multifamily building ownership and management. A position housing advocates, like CTTU Vice President Luke Melonakos-Harrison said, is contradictory to other policies promoted by CTAA.
“They're not a neutral party,” Melonakos-Harrison said of CTAA. “They are funding lobbyists, and perhaps most insidiously, they are funding a misinformation campaign. They are tied into the National Apartment Association, which funded robo calls and mass texts that many of the members of our coalition received.”
During the most recent legislative session, CTAA advocated against the expansion of Connecticut’s just cause eviction law. The expansion would’ve prevented landlords from evicting tenants without a specific reason at the end of their lease.
Housing advocates said the bill would prevent potentially discriminatory evictions, while CTAA said it would make it more difficult to ensure their apartments were safe.
“The larger population of the LGBT community needs more protections in our housing, both for discriminatory reasons and just for the reality of being a renter in Connecticut, and facing jumps in rent and unaffordability,” Melonakos-Harrison said.
The Connecticut Apartment Association said in a statement the group wants to promote policies that increase housing production and generate safe homes.
“We respect the people and opinions of those who disagree with positions we take at the Capitol,” the statement read. “This is part of our democracy, based on civil discourse and the right to disagree, and we will continue the work we do every day for the individuals and families who live in our apartment communities.”
