Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner has told the HUD to stop enforcing a rule that bans discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in some housing and shelter programs administered by the department, saying that banning such discrimination is “far-left gender ideology” and that God wants the HUD to stop enforcing the rule.

“We, at this agency, are carrying out the mission laid out by President Trump on January 20th when he signed an executive order to restore biological truth to the federal government,” Turner said in a statement last week. “This means recognizing there are only two sexes: male and female. It means getting government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in His own image.”

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Trump guidance on “how to spot a transgender person” at homeless shelters ended
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The policy is about the 2012 Equal Access Rule, which bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital status in housing programs and shelters that receive federal money. It was expanded in 2016 to allow trans people to be housed with their gender rather than their sex assigned at birth, which can be a roadblock to accessing transitional and emergency housing since trans women can face violence and discrimination when housed with men.

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The rule was repeatedly attacked in Donald Trump’s first term by then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson, who took several years to promulgate rules to allow homeless shelters to only accept people on the basis of their sex assigned at birth. Carson himself repeatedly insulted transgender people. The HUD then released a guide for homeless shelters to help them spot trans women, which included instructing homeless shelters to look for Adam’s apples and women who are tall.

In 2021, former President Joe Biden’s HUD secretary, Marcia Fudge, withdrew the rules changes from the Trump administration and re-implemented the Equal Access Rule from the Obama administration.

“Unfortunately, transgender and gender non-conforming people report more instances of housing instability and homelessness than cisgender people,” she noted at the time.

Now Secretary Turner says that the HUD will “halt any pending or future enforcement actions related to HUD’s 2016 Equal Access Rule, which, in essence, tied housing programs, shelters and other facilities funded by HUD to far-left gender ideology.”

What this means is that trans people will have to be housed with their sex assigned at birth. This means that many homeless trans people will effectively not have access to HUD-funded programs and shelters.

Out Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) said that she is “no longer surprised about how low [the Trump administration] are willing to go.”

“This is designed to come after the most vulnerable members of the trans community, people who depend on federally funded shelters,” she told NOTUS. “It’s cruel and will no doubt put American people at risk and without a roof over their heads.”

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