Aug 03, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

When the local group Transgender Health Empowerment, Inc., launched its Tyra Hunter Drop-In Center last March in a three-story townhouse on North Capitol Street, organizers expected to provide a variety of HIV prevention and social services to mostly adult transgender women.

But in the past two months, younger clients like 19-year-old Nannaboo Mack, a transgender woman who said she learned about the center from the “streets,” have descended on the facility in large numbers, stretching its resources and threatening to overextend its budget.

“We’re getting swamped,” said Brian Watson, Transgender Health Empowerment’s director of programs.

As a first-of-its-kind transgender facility in Washington, the center includes a washer and dryer, a shower, a kitchen and a supply of emergency clothing and hygienic products for clients who often are homeless, Watson and other center staff members said.

They said the center, among other things, provides employment, medical and drug treatment referral services, along with HIV testing and prevention counseling — all aimed at helping transgender persons in need get on their feet and become self-sufficient.

Transgender Health Empower-ment opened the center’s building at 1711 North Capitol St., N.E., in 2005 as the city’s first emergency housing facility for homeless transgender persons as well as gay men and lesbians. Known then as Supportive House, the facility included five beds in two sleeping rooms.

The group later moved its emergency housing services to another building nearby on Rhode Island Avenue and converted the North Capitol Street building into the drop-in center as well as its business office, Watson said.

In its first few months as a drop-in center, many of the North Capitol Street facility’s clients were transgender women who engaged in prostitution to survive and who were at high risk for HIV, Watson said.

Watson and the center’s coordinator, veteran transgender activist Earline Budd, said things changed in the past two months when the center’s reputation as a welcoming place for trans people prompted large numbers of inner city transgender youth and gay male and lesbian youth to flock to the facility for support.

Watson and Budd said many of the youth are homeless, with some tossed out of their homes by parents. Others choose to leave home due to parents who become hostile over their sexual orientation or gender identity, the two said.

“I’m so thankful for a program like this,” said a 22-year-old transgender woman who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The young trans woman said she is not homeless but has benefited from the center’s social and job services, including its computer terminal intended for resume-writing and its group discussion sessions among clients.

“If there weren’t a program like this, where would the girls go?” she said. “They’d be out in the alleys.”

An 18-year-old gay man who identified himself as Terrence said he was “put out” of his home by his father who could not deal with his sexual orientation. He was forced to drop out of school, but the center is now arranging for him to return to one of the city’s high schools, where he hopes to graduate soon.

The center has also arranged for a place for him to stay.

Mack said she managed to graduate from high school in spite of an incident in which a male student accused her of “coming on” to him in the boy’s bathroom. The incident took place before she began transitioning from male to female. The accusation was false, she said, claiming she wasn’t at all interested in the boy who made the accusation.

But the incident led to her being summoned to the principal’s office.

At a July 24 meeting of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Advisory Committee, Watson told of how the center is running low on supplies and may soon run over its budget due to the unexpected influx of gay and transgender youth.

“We don’t want to turn anybody away,” he said.

Watson said the Tyra Hunter Drop-In Center is operating as a six-month pilot project of Transgender Health Empowerment under a $70,000 grant from the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA). He said Marsha Martin, HAA’s director under former Mayor Anthony Williams, approved the grant one month before Fenty took office and asked her to step down from the post.

Fenty has yet to name Martin’s replacement. Dr. Gregg Pane, director of the D.C. Department of Health, which oversees HAA, is also serving as HAA’s interim director, saying he plans to revamp and improve the administration’s operations before recommending a new permanent director.

“There’s no guarantee of funding for the drop-in center after September,” Watson said, when the six-month pilot funding runs out.

Jeanie Unger, ...