Black & Beyond the Binary Collective event raises funds and awareness for ongoing housing instability crisis
Revered Portland drag queen Marla Darling pretended everything was okay. She wasn’t telling her coworkers, but she was living in a garage.
Darling told the all-too-common story from the stage at “Drag the House Up!,” a July 12 fundraiser at The Get Down in Southeast Portland. The event, which drew nearly 150 attendees, raised over $4,000 for the Black & Beyond the Binary Collective , or B3C, Housing Safety Fund, which benefits transgender and nonbinary people in need of assistance with rent and security deposits.
The fund, a collaboration between B3C and Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services, seeks to address the extreme rate of housing discrimination and homelessness among trans and nonbinary people, though it is open to any homeless or housing-insecure adults in Multnomah County.
“One in five transgender people in the United States has been discriminated against when seeking a home, and more than one in 10 have been evicted from their homes, because of their gender identity,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Although the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development prohibits this discrimination under the Fair Housing Act, without explicit legal protection at state and local levels, it continues. One in five trans people has been homeless at some point in life, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, a dynamic that plays out in Portland.
“The partnership was the result of a Fiscal Year 2021 program offer included in the Joint Office’s budget for that year that allocated funding for transgender-specific services,” Julia Comnes, Joint Office spokesperson, said. “The Joint Office made it a priority to support transgender community members experiencing homelessness because they can be especially vulnerable on the streets and can face barriers to accessing traditional shelter services.”
The Joint Office also provided B3C an additional $42,500 in one-time funding in fiscal year 2023 as part of the Joint Office’s LGBTQIA2S+ Housing Forum.
Portland: Neighbors Welcome , a volunteer-run nonprofit advocating for affordable housing in Portland, started organizing the drag show in December 2022.
“All kinds of people donated their time and energy,” Anna Kemper, Portland: Neighbors Welcome president, said.
B3C and the Joint Office Babatunde Azubuike, B3C executive director, founded the organization in 2020 as a result of their collaboration with queer and trans organizers doing housing work. Azubuike started the B3C Housing Safety Fund to honor the memory of TeTe Gulley , a Black trans woman believed by family and friends to be murdered in 2019.
“Whenever a trans person is lost to anti-trans violence, it's painful, but specifically, this person was murdered living out,” Azubuike said. “We wanted to create this fund as a memorial because we know that had TeTe had resources and people around her who were more educated about safety for Black and trans people, she would be alive. It’s not safe to be homeless and Black on the street.”
The Joint Office provided B3C with $250,000 in its first fiscal year via Portland nonprofit JOIN, which subcontracts B3C, and has continued its financial support each year since. Along with city funding, in its third year, the Housing Safety Fund was brought up to $500,000. Azubuike said fiscal responsibility is paramount, with less than half being used on staffing, administration and fiscal sponsor overhead, leaving the largest portion for the community in need.
“We serve our community in a way that’s authentic, empathetic and supportive,” Azubuike said. “We use funding to help people with storage fees, utilities, application fees for passports and IDs, retention for housing and aid to people living in cars. We are responsive and nimble in using money.”
B3C helped about 200 people in the last four years stay in housing or get new housing, according to Azubuike. They said B3C has received positive feedback from surveys of participants when they follow up after six and 12 months.
Azubuike said additional funding has allowed them to continue branching services to people outside of the Black and trans demographic; this has included Indigenous and white disabled people.
“A lot of our folks are disabled; over 65% from our housing fund have a disability,” Azubuike said. “Ableism is perpetuated in our society, so many people with disabilities are forced to live in poverty.”
Act 1: Housing insecurity The performances in the first part of the drag show reflected the intensity of housing instability.
Shane Kwiatkowski, a Portland: Neighbors Welcome board member, kicked off the evening with her story of homelessness. Before coming to peace with her family over her trans identity and moving in with them, Kwiatkowski lived in eight different places over four years. She stayed in a building with frequent drug use, a covered porch, an uninsulated room, a leaky trailer and spent a year in unsafe social service housing. She said she has also found community in the last four years.
Volunteers from Portland: Neighbors Welcome introduced each drag queen: The Eggboy, Radium Eve, Cruz Daniels, Desdemona Lisa, Ripper Simmore Flesh, ¡Olé Brujo!, Kisses Major Ash and Marla Darling.
Most performers started with a story about their past experiences with homelessness or housing insecurity and being discriminated against because of their appearance and their name. Generational poverty, as well as rent and utility increases, drove many to extreme measures: living in a forest, in a building with insect infestations, sleeping outside, in a car or in other people’s beds.
Desdemona Lisa was introduced as “A work of art and a piece of work.” They stood onstage with a suitcase in front of their face and talked about how unfair and hard it is to find housing stability and how they can’t help their friends because they have to make their own mortgage payments. They then revealed dramatic face paint and strolled through the audience handing out various sizes of bags nested within each other; inside the suitcase was a trash bag, within that was a reusable bag and a series of smaller bags until the last item was a shot glass.
“This was a nod, with humor, to the fact that even during a time of great desperation, people need to celebrate, to feel joy and community,” Desdemona Lisa said.
Kisses Major Ash lip-synced a song from Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights.” Cruz Daniels danced dramatically in a sparkly black dress. The dance floor filled quickly, and the crowd cheered loudly for every act, throwing cash on the stage. One audience member shouted, “It’s a nonprofit party.”
In addition to the performers, four nonprofits tabled during the event. Groups included Welcome Home Coalition , a group of service providers and affordable housing developers advocating for housing equity in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. Also featured were Taking Ownership PDX and PDX Housing Solidarity Project , both concerned with housing issues and racial inequity. Handing out information along with tote bags and other merchandise was the Equi Institute , which focuses on community health care and harm reduction for the trans, queer, gender diverse and intersex community.
Act 2: Housing abundance Following intermission, the theme for the second half of the show was housing abundance.
“When you have the assurance that you have a space to live, that enables a feeling of well-being,” Desdemona Lisa said. “The energy of those performances exemplified calm, exuberance and unrestrained joy.”
This confidence was apparent when ¡Olé Brujo! danced expressively, and when another performer sang “Man in the Mirror.”
Kwiatkowski explained the performers were imagining a world where they not only had housing abundance but that abundance inherently celebrated their queerness and uplifted the art and community they could make even before having unstable living conditions.
“If queer people can make this much art out of cardboard and trauma, imagine if you gave us a parcel of land and a community land trust with a four-unit building, and we started doing housing cooperatives,” Kwiatkowski said. “If you give artists and people who deeply care about community more access to resources where they decide on their choice and not appealing to the Planning and Sustainability Commission or the city of Portland or the state of Oregon ... ‘Here’s a plot of land, here’s money, go for it and make good mischief.’”
Portland: Neighbors Welcome The founding message for Portland: Neighbors Welcome is “We go slow to go together.” Its philosophy is that it takes many creative solutions to bring about change.
“Portland: Neighbors Welcome is built on a three-legged stool model with equitable zoning, tenant protection and housing for people in crisis,” Trisha Patterson, board secretary, said. “The drag show challenges world views and adds to the housing conversation. Drag can illustrate the diversity of it all. It was a community building event.”
She emphasized housing abundance means homes for everyone who wants them in the area that they want and can afford.
“We live in a world where the housing market is a game of musical chairs,” Aaron Brown, Portland: Neighbors Welcome volunteer, said. “At some point, the music ends, and people try to sit three to a chair. It's not surprising that the most vulnerable among us are left without a chair. We have so few chairs because there is so much powerful local control.”
The group advocates for more abundant and affordable housing within Portland city limits rather than expanding the growth boundaries.
“According to the most recent data from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, we are almost 90,000 homes short for households making 50% or less of the Area Median Income ($53,250 for a household of four),” Metro Council’s website reads in reference to the affordable housing bond. “More people need affordable housing and there is not enough to meet the demand.”
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