Trans femininities at risk: from housing vulnerability to being homeless

Abstract

This article aims to describe the various situations of social vulnerability in terms of housing suffered by the transgender population of the City of Buenos Aires. We define housing vulnerability as a type of specific fragility within a broader framework of social vulnerability that certain social groups experience while trying to access to decent housing. This vulnerability is linked to the overlapping of factors such as transgenders being expelled from their households, adverse economic conditions, low educational level and a stigma that produces a social marking of transgender identity. Housing vulnerability ranges from 1) the difficulty in accessing the formal rental of properties due to not fulfilling admission requirements (guarantees, salary receipts, and even unregistered changes of identity) and/or due to owners’ rejection of
transgender applicants; 2) non-admission to hotels and boarding houses that usually have precarious facilities and, even, 3) living on the street. The article explains the relationship between social vulnerability in terms of housing and transgender identity and identifies the specific features that this type of vulnerability assumes in the transgender population, being homelessness the maximum expression of such vulnerability.