Amber Green and her children slept in their van after fleeing Texas over the state’s persecution of trans youth. They shared Green’s Dodge Caravan with four cats and three pet lizards, forced to huddle against their owners for warmth when the nights would dip below the freezing point. They slept at a truck stop in Connecticut where a security guard was on duty at all hours of the day so that Green would feel a little safer and less exposed. Every evening at bedtime, her kids changed into their pajamas and brushed their teeth in the truck stop bathrooms, and Green would play lullabies on the car stereo to help them fall asleep.
It took three months for Green’s friends to find her family an apartment in their new state, but their troubles didn’t end there. Her van was repossessed because she couldn’t afford the payments, putting her temporarily out of work until she could get a new vehicle. Although Green is trained as a medical assistant, she had been making Walmart deliveries to feed her children, using her own automobile. “I would literally go do deliveries during the day with the cats and lizards with me,” Green tells LGBTQ Nation.
Despite all they had been through, Green knew they had no choice but to stick it out in Connecticut. After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued a February 2022 order directing the Department of Protective and Family Services to investigate parents of trans children for abuse, child welfare agents knocked on their door on three separate occasions. Green says that her kids began “having nightmares that someone was going to come in and take them away from me,” and she, too, constantly worried that her middle daughter, who is trans, would be separated from her. The family has already begun researching how to escape to Canada if Donald Trump is reelected in November, terrified that his presidency may bring even worse horrors.
“There’s still that fear that we’re going to have to leave everything behind again,” she says. “I told the kids this time we can’t take our lizards. I’m going to probably find homes for the cats because we’re just going to have to go over the border and seek asylum.” She pauses before adding: “You never know what the outcome of the election is going to be until it happens.”
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LGBTQ+ refuge and a cost-of-living crisis
Families of trans youth fleeing hostile states are currently facing a cost-of-living crisis as they are forced to move to progressive areas that are also more expensive, and with the election upon us, many fear there is no clear answer on the horizon. Connecticut, for instance, is one of 14 states with a law on the books shielding trans health care, and it also has a statewide ban on conversion therapy and a fully inclusive nondiscrimination law. But last year, Connecticut also ranked among America’s ten most expensive states to live in, while Hartford and New Haven made the top five priciest cities, at #1 and #4.
Among the factors that make Connecticut so expensive are annual local property taxes on private vehicles and the high energy cost. After fleeing Texas two years ago, Kimberly Shappley — whose 13-year-old daughter, Kai, is a prominent trans youth activist — says that she came home to a note on the door one day about a $700 heating bill, even though she’d rarely kept the thermostat above 65 degrees. Meanwhile, her apartment was $900 more than her previous residence in Austin, one of the most costly places to live in Texas. She adds that her car insurance rates skyrocketed simply because she lived in Connecticut.
Shappley began working every side job she could get while clipping coupons and shopping at Goodwill to save money, but she struggled to keep up. “I came from a place where the cost of living was going up and moved to a place where the cost of living was through the f**king roof,” she tells LGBTQ Nation. “In Connecticut, people say, ‘Well, our taxes are only higher because our roads are better.’ I would rather drive on potholes and be able to afford groceries for my kids.”
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Connecticut isn’t the only state where families of trans youth are facing complex challenges in their relocation. Minnesota, which declared itself a trans refuge state in April 2023, is experiencing a housing crisis: Minneapolis, its capital and largest city, currently has one of the worst housing shortages of any metropolitan area in the country. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, even families who are obtaining housing may be struggling to afford it: A 2018 report found that 43% of renters in the greater Minneapolis area were “cost-burdened,” meaning that they pay more than 30% of their income in rent each month. At the time, the organization estimated that 65,000 more affordable units needed to be built to meet the needs of cash-strapped Minneapolitans.
LGBTQ+ groups say they are having a difficult time meeting the needs of vulnerable populations who have come to Minnesota for safety. When Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed the trans refuge bill last year, Aaron Zimmerman, executive director of the PFund Foundation, says that local organizations didn’t have a “ton of infrastructure in place” to provide services to all the families that would be reaching out for assistance. A second group, Transforming Families, says that multiple parents reach out every week looking for help with relocation, whether it’s finding affordable housing or an affirming school district where their trans child will be safe.
Community organizations have banded together to offer referrals to local resource providers through the Minnesota Trans and Intersex Resource Network, which helps connect families with mental health clinics or a doctor who provides gender-affirming care for youth. “There’s a great resource guide for folks moving to Minnesota,” Zimmerman tells LGBTQ Nation. “They can fill out a survey that gets them into our periphery and allows them also to receive regular communications from us.” But he notes that the system itself has struggled to meet the rapid influx of demand: Minnesota hospitals that treat trans kids are currently experiencing a year-long waiting period for new patients, Zimmerman says.
“If we’re going to say we’re a trans refuge state, then we need to fund it.”
Aaron Zimmerman, Executive Director, PFund Foundation
“It does mean that we have to get our act together here in the state and really commit,” he adds. “If we’re going to say we’re a trans refuge state, then we need to fund it. We need national funders to come and support this work because it’s 20 different states that we tracked that people are moving from. It’s Florida, it’s Texas, and it’s all the states surrounding us. Folks are coming here from all over. There’s a lot of people here fighting and doing really amazing things to try to make things work.”
State Rep. Leigh Finke (D), who authored the trans refuge bill, says that Minnesota lawmakers have been working to respond to these crises. Last year, Walz signed a $2 billion bill to increase investment in housing and homelessness services, the largest-ever of its kind in the state’s history. The legislation included $150 million to subsidize downpayments for first-time homeowners and $6 million in rental assistance. But the fight isn’t over. Predicting that affordable housing would remain the “biggest national crisis” America will face over the next two decades, Finke hopes to see Minnesota continue investing in the communities most vulnerable to these decades-long systemic issues.
“As a state that has put in trans refuge protections, there’s this idea that we will protect you when you are here,” she tells LGBTQ Nation.
“There’s a lot more we can do. We need to make sure that we are not just building housing but building communities that are inclusive, making sure that we have safe schools and places where trans kids and young adults can find work,” says Fink. “Sustainable employment and housing are the foundations of everything that we need to have to be participants in our society.”
Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, author of the trans refugee bill, hugs Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan Thursday, April 27, 2023, St. Paul, Minn. Gov. Tim Walz signed three progressive priorities of the session: a ban on conversion therapy for minors and vulnerable adults and two bills that would make Minnesota a refuge for people traveling for abortion and gender-affirming care. Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images.
While LGBTQ+ advocates urge other progressive states to follow Minnesota’s lead in addressing the struggles facing families of trans youth, they may face challenges in doing so. Colorado state Rep. Brianna Titone (D) says that her state’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights amendment prevents lawmakers from increasing most forms of taxation without prior approval from voters including property and sales taxes. (In contrast, Minnesota’s housing bill was funded through a 0.25% tax increase in the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area.) Colorado has become a popular relocation spot for families of trans youth after passing its own sanctuary law. Still, Titone worries that political leaders don’t have the tools to ensure that those parents and kids can thrive in their new home.
“We have done a lot to encourage and incentivize transit-oriented housing: denser developments around housing that’s more convenient for transportation, whether that be bus or trains,” she tells LGBTQ Nation. “But we can’t build stuff fast enough. Inflation keeps getting away, and interest rates keep going all over the place. So we’re trying to do the best we can, but it still doesn’t seem like it’s enough.”
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Many LGBTQ+ advocates say that federal action is needed to provide greater support to families who have been made refugees in their own country, and families of trans youth agree. Although 16 states now have laws or executive orders in place to shield parents and children from prosecution for seeking gender-affirming care, these states, in many cases, remain ill-equipped to meet the complex needs of families like hers. The Connecticut Department of Children and Families had Green investigated for child endangerment because her family was temporarily homeless. Adding insult to injury, the state’s Department of Social Services initially refused to provide her with food assistance because she didn’t meet residency requirements.
Shappley finds it ironic that Connecticut launched a campaign in September inviting families fleeing hostile states to move there; state leaders, she remarks, seem to have thought little about what happens when those refugees actually arrive. Last year, she says that her family was so cash-strapped that she was still logging into work remotely as she lay in the hospital stricken with a severe case of COVID. “You can’t die until you’ve at least finished the pay period,” she thought to herself, “so that your kids will have a check.” Shappley notes that she is still paying off the bill from her hospitalization over a year later.
Although Green’s family has stayed in Connecticut, Shappley and her children left the state this year following anti-trans harassment in their community. “Having to move as many times as we’ve moved to try to keep my family safe, that alone is pretty devastating, but we’ve increasingly had to move to more expensive places,” she says. “I don’t know how I’ll ever recover from all this, and I’m scared because I now have no savings. I’ll never be able to retire. I am going to work until I’m 100 years old because I’m still trying to overcome what it has cost us to leave the South.”
With a possible Kamala Harris presidency on the horizon, Shappley wants to see a potential Harris-Walz administration go further than President Joe Biden, who she feels has done little to protect families like hers. She believes the White House must offer guidance to trans sanctuary states so that they can respond effectively to the myriad ongoing crises that parents and children face. Shappley, too, would like to see anti-trans states held accountable for persecuting vulnerable communities, such as in the form of a class-action lawsuit from affected families. She hopes that a Harris presidency would be an ally in that effort.
“I think all of us should be allowed to sue the states, to go after these politicians,” she says. “They shouldn’t be protected. This has been too much. We’ve lost so much.”
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