‘We want people to feel welcome’: Inside the UK’s only homeless shelter for trans people

It’s not much to look at from the outside: a nondescript building on a busy Hackney street, all concrete and iron-barred windows. But inside, the Trans Winter Night Shelter is a riot of colour. 

‘Don’t just tolerate it, celebrate it’; ‘Trans Joy’; ‘You are not alone!’

The entrance hall is decorated with signs from trans pride marches, donated by The Museum of Transology. Liberatory slogans jostle with Chappell Roan references and puns (“Your cis-tem seems fragile”) – every inch of the wall is covered.  

“We wanted people to feel welcome, as soon as they got inside,” Carla Ecola, shelter manager, tells Big Issue. “We’re still working on it. The rooms could be cozier. But we’re getting there.”

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“It was absolutely trashed when we first got it, we had to completely gut the place. Loads of volunteers came down – Lesbian and Gays support the Migrants, Friends of the Joiners Arms. A bunch of teenagers were singing musicals in the basement. A football team helped. So we’re getting there.”

When Big Issue visits in February, the renovations have paid off. The homely communal area boasts a stack of board games, a telly, a rail of clothes, a shelfload of books and DVDs; the kitchen’s pantry is fully-stocked tins and fresh produce. 

The shelter – run by LGBTQ+ homelessness organisation The Outside Project – has space for 12 guests. A lack of funding means it can only operate in the winter. But it provides a vital service to some of the most vulnerable people in the country: Transgender asylum seekers.

“Our very first resident – and the vast majority of our residents – are people who have sought or are seeking asylum,” Ecola says. “That’s a really pressing need. A lot of people just fall through the gaps of the mainstream support system.”

In 64 countries homosexuality is illegal. 1,500 LGBTQ+ asylum seekers from those states come to the UK every year, while still more apply from countries where discrimination is rife. 

At least 14 countries specifically criminalise the gender identity of transgender people, using so-called ‘cross-dressing’, ‘impersonation’ and ‘disguise’ laws. In many more countries transgender people are targeted by a range of laws that criminalise same-sex activity and vagrancy, hooliganism and public order offences.

But Britain is not always a safe haven, says Moud Goba, national director of LGBTQ+ migrant charity Micro Rainbow.

“They [queer asylum seekers] can face stigma and violence” from other residents at Home Office accommodation centres, she explains. Fearing for their safety, many leave – and fall into homelessness.

“As a trans person, it is very dangerous to be street homeless,” Goba, who is also visiting the shelter, says. “It really does put people in precarious situations where they can experience a lot of violence, sexual violence. 

“People fall into exploitation. A lot of women we [Micro Rainbow] work with fall into domestic servitude. People say, ‘Come live with me. Help me look after my children, I will pay you.’ And then they don’t.

“Or they get end up in exploitative relationships or sex work, you know, situations that are essentially trafficking, because you do need a roof over your head, [and] subsistence, to survive.”

Asylum seekers are already incredibly vulnerable to homelessness; as Big Issue has reported, they are not allowed to work and must survive on minimal financial support of £49.18 per week. 

If an asylum claim is refused by both the Home Office and a court and declared ‘appeal rights exhausted’, the claimant loses the right to any government support. Yet many of these people are ultimately recognised as refugees. In 2023, 2,294 people were granted leave to remain in the UK after submitting fresh asylum claims.

The Home Office “manufactures destitution” among people who are wrongly refused asylum, Jesuit Refugee Service UK told Big Issue, pushing them into homelessness. Meanwhile, there remains a chronic lack of access to legal aid for those going through this process.

“People are very poor, they do not have much,” Gobi said. “It is very hard for them to make ends meet when they have no recourse to public funds. They fall into this empty space, too many end up homeless.”

The streets are dangerous for everyone – but particularly for transgender people, who do not know how they might be received when they present support services.

“Look, you never know who is going to walk through the front door of a mainstream shelter,” Ecola says. “You can train all the staff – they can be legends – but you don’t know who your neighbours are going to be. We’re working with someone who has just been really violently attacked at a women’s refuge. The women’s refuge is onside, but that person’s neighbour wasn’t. So what can you do? Actually provide queer spaces, run by and for queer people.”

Micro Rainbow created the UK’s very first housing scheme for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, opening the first safe house in 2017.

But there is a lack of transgender-specific support. That’s where the Trans Winter Night Shelter comes in. 

Ayu – not their real name – has been staying at the Hackney location. Surrounded by other transgender people, this is the first time they feel safe.

“My home country is so beautiful, the countryside, the city, the weather, the food, the people – I miss it so much but also I could not be myself and I couldn’t live like that anymore,” they told Big Issue. 

“When I came to the UK I was so scared and I didn’t know anyone, but being here with my LGBT family I feel safe and this is now where I feel for the first time is my true home. Even though I have nothing! I am alive and I have legal protection and equality to be myself for the first time, to not be afraid, to hide or to be ‘caught’ as who I am.”

Barbz, 38, was staying at an asylum hotel but much prefers the Trans Winter Night Shelter.

“The staff at the hotel were not considerate about my privacy. The cleaner would randomly walk into my room without knocking. There are people at the trans shelter like me and I don’t have to put up a front. I don’t need to be ‘macho’.”

Long-term funding has been a challenge. The shelter has thus far relied on community donations (totalling around £22,000) to operate. Existing grants are few and far between.

“A community effort has made it happen. But we are going to need funding from other sources,” Ecola adds.

“I would like this place to be open 24 hours. It’s not ideal that it’s not (Trans Winter Night Shelter opening hours are 6pm to 9pm until April). “It feels like the more vulnerable people, we aren’t able to help and hold. It’s just not something you can do with solely community funding.” 

It’s hard to say how many homeless people in the UK are LGBTQ+, research published by the government is September shows. 

But the “housing needs of LGBT homeless people are not being met fully by housing and support services”, it concedes. 

Obviously, says Ecola. The existing climate – in which anti-trans rhetoric has ramped up in the media and in politics – has made existing shelters unsafe for transgender people, be they asylum seekers or otherwise.

“There is so much hostility,” they said. “Queer and trans people need trans and queer specific services. The homelessness sector see it as an ‘add-on’ to be LGBTIQ+ inclusive, but trans people need specialist housing provision.”

12 beds, of course, is 12 beds – It doesn’t scratch the surface of this demand. And the shelter cannot afford to stay open all year round, a goal of the Outside Project. But it’s a start. 

“We will continue to support trans people, trans refugees. We need more but we will keep going,” Ecola says. “What else can you do?”

You can support the Trans Winter Night Shelter crowdfunder here.

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