Crow Harmony never felt at ease living in Florida as a transgender guy. The state has some of the most restrictive anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the country, and Harmony said he struggled to find employers willing to hire trans people. Last fall, after Harmony’s boyfriend transitioned, the couple lost their housing.
They were just 21 and 20 with no money or job prospects, so Harmony reached out to a Seattle nonprofit for help getting out of Florida. The nonprofit, a trans-led organization called Traction, welcomed the couple with a place to sleep and money for moving.
But unbeknownst to Harmony, Traction was struggling, too.
Since the 2024 election, Traction has helped 1,500 trans people flee red states — more than 20 times the 70 people it aided in the 18 months before the election. And it’s just one of several Seattle nonprofits whose leaders say they don’t have the resources to help the number of trans people who’ve left their homes for the safety of the Pacific Northwest.
Though trans people make up just 1 percent of the population in Washington state, the nonprofits that help them say their budgets are drained and their staffs are stretched so thin that last month the Seattle LGBTQ Commission asked Mayor Katie Wilson (D) to declare a civil state of emergency. Such a declaration would free up general fund dollars to bolster the nonprofits’ finances as they help transplants find housing and jobs.
“The conditions,” the commission wrote in a June 2 letter to Wilson and the City Council, “are an urgent policy concern and a life-and-death matter for internal displaced persons fleeing to Seattle for safety.”
The peninsula is another option. While still expensive, it's definitely much cheaper than anything else on the other side of the sound
Most queer folk on the peninsula are doing everything they can to get away from there. Very pretty, but there is fuckall out there besides small town weirdness and fent/heroin...
I'm trans and live out here. None of my queer friends are trying to leave. The times have changed. Kitsap is especially queer friendly now. Not sure what fent/heroin has to do with anything - Seattle has that too.
... Kitsap county isn't part of the olympic peninsula.
Yes, it's its own. But it still is on this side of the sound, and much of the same things apply to it, and it is a cheaper option than Seattle.
My friends aren't all in Kitsap, no. Many of the friends I have live in Sequim and Port Townsend. They're both queer friendly areas with prominent queer communities.
Alright. And while your anecdotal evidence is as valid as my own, I will put out that house prices in Sequim average ~$500k, and PT is around ~$650k (for reference, seattle is ~$850k. Median rent in Kitsap county is ~$1750/mo for a 1br)
Yes, being in one of the trendy neo-suburbs of seattle is likely to be more queer friendly - but it's still not exactly affordable to live there. If the goal is "a jobless trans person can afford to live there on savings while they get established" in western wa, you start looking at towns deeper on the peninsula or western WA in general - places like Elma, Aberdeen, Moclips. I'll freely admit that I didn't consider places like Port Townsend in my initial cautioning - because it's not a place someone can easily afford to move to, especially from one of the states queer people generally are fleeing from.
(edit: clarity)
It doesn't resolve the issue, for sure. But my original point still stands that it's cheaper over here.
Sure, fair enough. Unfortunately my original point that it's inordinately expensive to live here also still stands. It's cheaper on the various peninsulas, but not all that much - and those various sound towns don't have much in the way of community support infrastructure.
I didn't mean to claim that it was cheap. I said cheaper than Seattle.
I'm just confused as to what your goal was, I guess. Sure it's cheaper, but those areas are just extensions of the problem with the outrageously high cost of living and housing in the greater seattle area. Anyone that's in a position where they can choose Port Townsend over Seattle isn't struggling to get by - and the lack of funding for public services as expressed in the OP article really isn't relevant to them.
My goal was to say that this side of the sound is cheaper than Seattle and still has a growing queer community. It was never to claim that either option was cheap, that's not something I ever claimed. In fact, my very first reply to you said that it was still expensive.
You replied that most queers are trying to get out of the peninsula, and my experience (as a trans person) has been the opposite. The community is growing out here, and so are the queer support groups (especially local non profits).
That's it. Stating those two things was my goal. I'm still confused why you brought up opiates when that is also very much a problem on the other side of the sound.
Because for several years on the olympic peninsula, fentanyl overdose displaced heart disease for leading cause of death. Opiate abuse is still incredibly high anywhere on the peninsulas outside the greater seattle suburb cities, far higher per capita even than in seattle proper. It's an incredibly rampant problem, driven mainly by the socioeconomic stagnation that makes people want to flee from those towns. I'm glad you're surviving, but I gotta be honest, in a discussion about the total lack of charity funding because of the massive demand for their services it's kinda weird to come in and suggest moving to places that are only slightly better, or to assume that those regions are what's being discussed instead of the massive region full of destitute conservatives.
I understand you want to correct someone you feel is maligning the region in which you live and your lived experience and so forth, but in this case I think you have misunderstood the fundemental premise.
It's not weird to suggest, at all. At no point did I suggest that it would fix anything. I was following the same thread as OP in that the surrounding areas are also welcoming and slightly cheaper. I have never, not once, called it cheap.
I think you are stuck on solving the systemic problem and are unable to see that there are plenty of queer people that can afford to live out here but not in Seattle, people just like me. People who escaped the very red states mentioned (again, like myself and several of my queer friends), to live on the peninsula. Some of whom have gotten support from these charities as well. It's not a black and white issue. If you hope for it to be completely solved for everyone, it's not going to happen overnight. It's systemic, shitting on the communities that make it work is not how you gain what you want.
The opiates are actually not relevant to this discussion at all, so it's ironic that you brought that up and now are saying that my suggestion was irrelevant. You seem to have some sort of idea about life out here, and that it hasn't changed at all. Do you live out here to know what it's like, or have you lived here within the last 10 or so years?