Housing Instability Among Gender-Expansive People and Paths Forward

For the first time in its 50-year history, the American Housing Survey (AHS) reported data separated by gender in its most recent release. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the AHS is the most comprehensive housing survey in the United States. It provides important information about the housing arrangements of U.S. households, including their housing costs and quality.

This new AHS data emphasizes that households led by gender-expansive people – people who identify as transgender or another gender-expansive term – face greater obstacles in accessing affordable housing, putting them at greater risk of housing instability and homelessness.

Implications of Increased Housing Instability

This increased risk has important implications for every local, state, and national elected leader. As this brief explains in more detail, leaders who want to create prosperous, stable, and affordable communities need to focus on:

developing and preserving deeply affordable housing;
ensuring universal access to rental assistance for low-income households; and
protecting and expanding targeted homeless assistance.

At the same time, communities cannot prosper if they leave certain groups behind. Elected leaders must also specifically address wide disparities in housing outcomes for gender-expansive households. At a minimum, elected leaders at all levels can uplift the most marginalized groups and create stronger communities for everyone by:

supporting, protecting, and preserving regulations and legislation that ensure equal access to housing and emergency shelter (such as HUD’s Equal Access Rule and Congress’ Equality Act);
removing burdensome requirements to show identity documents (specifically, documents aligned with a person’s sex assigned at birth) to access public facilities or receive public assistance;
ensuring that housing and homelessness programs meet the specific needs of gender-expansive households; and
protecting and expanding access to housing and services that support gender-expansive peoples’ health needs.

In the current political context, many of the goals in this report may seem aspirational at best. This does not change the fact that building more prosperous, secure, and stable communities requires taking seriously the needs of people who are most at risk of homelessness. While federal action is important, in its absence, state and local leaders can also take many of the steps outlined in this report to promote housing stability for their gender-expansive constituents.

How Discrimination Impacts Gender-Expansive Housing Access

Numerous researchers and people with lived experience have pointed out that gender-expansive households face some of the greatest challenges securing safe, stable housing. Discrimination creates barriers to education, employment, public assistance, and healthcare, making it challenging to afford housing.

Renters vs. Homeowners

The AHS demonstrates that gender-expansive households are more likely to rent their homes – and pay more of their income on housing – than their cisgender counterparts. Advocates also note how direct exclusion from affordable units, home loans, and long-term housing programs purely on the basis of gender reduce housing options for gender-expansive people.

The AHS data confirms these concerns and further demonstrates the need for leaders to support real solutions.

Disproportionate Racial and Ethnic Impacts

Cost burden statistics and rental trends are important indicators of larger housing disparities: Black, Indigenous, Latino and Asian people are more likely to rent their homes and experience severe cost burdens. While the AHS data does not specify how many respondents identify as both people of color and as gender-expansive, it is likely that this context especially impacts Black, Indigenous, Latino and/or Asian gender-expansive people.

Policies, practices and individual discrimination have, and continue to, systematically exclude these groups from building wealth and owning a home, impacting housing outcomes. Improving housing costs for these groups is critical for ensuring stability for all communities.

Intentional Exclusion and Gender-Based Discrimination

Cisgender people have access to more robust social networks, services, and income than gender-expansive households. Public and private safety nets often exclude gender-expansive people by requiring their identity documents to match their sex assigned at birth or by targeting assistance to married households and households with children. Previous experiences of discrimination may also discourage gender-expansive people from seeking income, housing, or health support.

Discrimination is not without consequences. If gender-expansive people cannot access these needed supports, services, and housing, they face a greater chance of entering homelessness.

Unaffordable housing, coupled with lower incomes, means that gender-expansive people continue to be overrepresented among people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Research indicates that once they are homeless, gender-expansive people also face numerous barriers accessing shelter, including concerns about personal safety and a lack of available programs to address their specific needs.

How Elected Leaders Can Promote Housing Stability

AHS data has important policy implications for lawmakers and advocates in search of evidence-based solutions to make progress on housing instability and homelessness. Unfortunately, many of these solutions are under threat.

Some threats intentionally target the most vulnerable groups, like gender-expansive people. In February 2025, HUD indicated a desire to reverse years of effective policy and systematically exclude gender-expansive people from its programs by eliminating the Equal Access Rule, which ensures access to safe housing for everyone.

In some communities and states, elected officials have enacted robust protections for their gender-expansive residents, recognizing the importance of supporting all their constituents. However, there is still important progress to be made to ensure that gender-expansive people have access to housing.

22 states, the US Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia prohibit housing discrimination based on gender identity. Most of these states also prohibit discrimination in employment, public accommodation and private health insurance.

While federal lawmakers could lead these efforts, in the absence of federal action, state and local leaders must be willing to protect their gender-expansive constituents and help address disparities by making housing affordability possible for everyone. Elected leaders can take a variety of steps to specifically address these challenges and help improve housing outcomes for constituents.

1.1

Most immediately, federal officials must protect and uphold HUD’s Equal Access Rule. The Equal Access Rule protects gender-expansive people and numerous other groups from discrimination, like single parents and survivors of domestic violence. It ensures that HUD-funded programs serve people in accordance with their gender identity. This rule is under immediate threat; advocates must remain vigilant and prepare to tell HUD and their lawmakers that it is important and should remain intact.

1.2

Congressional lawmakers recently reintroduced the Equality Act, which explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics in key areas of life, including employment, housing, public accommodations, federally funded programs, education, jury selection, and credit. By passing the Act, elected leaders would take an important step toward ensuring that all people have fair and equal access to the resources they need to thrive.

1.3

Federal lawmakers can improve housing outcomes by adequately funding anti-discrimination enforcement in housing, employment and in public programs. Robust investments in local outreach to impacted households and efforts to hold those who discriminate accountable helps to ensure that no one faces unfair barriers to housing.

1.4

Federal lawmakers can also improve access to important programs by instituting an “Affirmative Right of Co-Residence.” This would ensure that unmarried LGBTQIA+ couples, people without children, and individuals qualify for the same benefits and protections that married heterosexual couples qualify for. Lawmakers could follow the example of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is available to anyone who lives together and purchases food together. Evidence suggests that gender-expansive people are more likely to live with partners and friends. These households often cannot access housing or income supports because they are unmarried or because one person does not have identity documents that align with their gender.

1.5

If federal lawmakers are unwilling to support policies that protect all people from discrimination, state and local lawmakers should step up with similar protections.

2.1

The current administration is seeking to prohibit people from changing the sex marker on federal identity documents. In April 2025, a federal judge blocked part of this reversal in policy but the matter is still pending in the courts.

2.2

State and local elected leaders should still work to eliminate unnecessary requirements to show government-issued identification to access housing and other programs. These changes will benefit all renters: many marginalized groups and people with low incomes face barriers obtaining up-to-date identity documents. Lack of documentation should not be a barrier to housing.

3. Develop and preserve deeply affordable housing.

3.1

Federal lawmakers can increase public financing for affordable housing development and preservation through programs like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and Home Investment Partnerships Program (HOME). LIHTC is currently the most significant resource for developing new affordable housing. Increasing funding to these programs, ensuring they serve people with the lowest incomes and guaranteeing that HUD has the staff to monitor and implement them, would help build more affordable and accessible communities for everyone, including gender-expansive people.

3.2

All residents, including gender-expansive people, deserve safe and affordable housing. Guaranteeing rental assistance and increasing incomes for low-income households are steps toward achieving this goal.

3.2

This can be done through existing programs like Housing Choice Vouchers and public housing, which help low-income households pay for otherwise unaffordable rental costs. During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergency Rental Assistance programs also significantly reduced housing instability. These programs benefit all low-income groups, including gender-expansive households experiencing housing insecurity. Evidence shows that rental assistance helps build more economically empowered and prosperous communities.

3.3

Income programs can help people afford rent. Increasing benefit amounts in existing programs like Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and guaranteed income programs would decrease the burden of rental costs on low-income groups.

4. Preserve and expand funding for critical Homeless Assistance Grants (HAG) in the FY2026 budget and in future appropriation bills.

4.1

These grants fund the Continuum of Care (CoC) program and the Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) program, the two primary federal programs to address homelessness. When appropriately funded, HAG helps local communities quickly rehouse their neighbors experiencing homelessness. However, these programs are grossly underfunded and the president’s budget recommends further cuts to them.

Congress should not shrink these programs but increase their appropriations in 2026 and beyond.

4.2

Congress should also preserve the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Program and appropriate sufficient resources to support it.

HOPWA is the only federal program dedicated to the housing needs of people living with HIV/AIDS – who are more likely to be LGBTQIA+ and people of color. It ensures that states and non-profit organizations have funds to provide affordable housing to low-income people living with HIV. Stable housing is critical to properly caring for people living with HIV, which prevents the spread of the disease and saves taxpayer money. The current Administration’s budget recommends ending the HOPWA program, merging it into the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG). This would end the guarantee of targeted assistance and attention to the population living with HIV.

4.3

LGBTQIA+ youth are at a very high risk of experiencing homelessness. The number of older adults experiencing homelessness is also growing rapidly. Programs targeting these groups’ needs can help ensure that future generations and those most vulnerable have a safe place to live. In recent years, HUD has implemented a LGBTQ Youth Homelessness Prevention Initiative and the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP).

At a minimum, these must be preserved but more efforts specifically targeting youth and older adults are needed at all levels of government.

Housing Access Improves Community Stability

Efforts to support housing affordability and stability, regardless of a person’s gender, improve prosperity for the entire community. When people have access to a home, they can more easily work, go to school and shop at local businesses.

On the other hand, housing unaffordability and homelessness negatively impact a community’s well-being: Limited housing options significantly reduces individual health and public health, putting strain on medical systems. Studies also indicate that local economies suffer when people do not have access to a safe, affordable place to live. Failing to invest in housing security for the most marginalized groups or intentionally excluding people from housing on the basis of their gender, will only lead to less safe, stable and prosperous communities for everyone.

Higher housing cost burdens and increasing rates of homelessness are not inevitable. Lawmakers can help create more abundant communities for everyone by making housing support more accessible to gender-expansive households. Specifically addressing housing disparities between cisgender people and gender-expansive people is efficient: it ensures that people most in need of resources have access to them. It is also urgent: it helps correct structural barriers to housing stability that prevent communities from prospering.

While some elected officials have opposed protections against housing discrimination for gender-expansive constituents, it is well past time to be honest about the real problem: federal, state, and local leaders do not adequately support policies, programs and protections that promote access to safe, affordable housing. Embracing these policies offers an opportunity for elected officials to build communities that support all constituents.