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.”
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?
I'm a data scientist for washington state social/health services, specializing in (among other things) at-risk demographics and epidemiological health reporting. So... yes, I'm pretty well versed in this subject.
The issue is not that queer people can't live here, but that people will move here because they have heard it's culturally great for queer people and nobody mentions that it's ungodly expensive to live here and our housing assistance programs are (in some cases quite literally) orders of magnitude beyond max capacity, so many of them become homeless or live in serious poverty as a result. That was what I called attention to in my original comment - and why I've been so confused as to why you brought up the possibility of living in the other nearby seattle-suburb cities. They have the same problem - there are few jobs that aren't highly specialized, those that do exist are inundated with applications (some entry positions I have seen have had thousands of applications) and housing is scarce and absurdly expensive.
You have to be very careful before moving out here to avoid falling into the endless debt pitfalls or outright homelessness. People really need to be aware of the reality that this is a hyper-capitalist area and the disgusting realities that come with it, and be prepared to handle that.
Again, I have never claimed that it was cheap. I cannot emphasize this enough, I don't think you've acknowledged my original statement and think I'm somehow saying it's affordable for everyone.
I brought it up because it saved my fucking life to move here, and I could not afford Seattle. The peninsula gave me my "in", because it was cheaper than Seattle. Just like it did for many others in this community. There are plenty that have made it work, aren't in significant debt, and yet aren't people I would call rich.
It's honestly been super insulting the way you continue to minimize the community out here, first by basically calling it a drug fueled hell hole (missing the fact that it's a national issue), and then by saying the community out here is fleeing the peninsula.
Yes, you need to be careful to not fall into homelessness, but I don't think you understand how bad it is outside of WA for queer people. We unfortunately live in a hyper capitalist country, where it's already extremely expensive to live anywhere progressive. This deeply affects queer people who then get trapped in red states where they're not tolerated, they also can't get a job, and therefore they also fall into homelessness. Not only that, the outright prosecution of trans people in red states is only serving to cause more trans suicides.
Do you think someone is going to just move here without preparing, just because I said it was cheaper than Seattle in a comment on Lemmy? That they're going to drop everything, including their brain, and move here at any cost? It's really not as black and white as you've been trying to make it.
Hmm. While I do apologize if you've been insulted, I'm also rather confused as to how you've been insulted. I haven't been disparaging any community you're a part of, unless you briefly moved from PT to humptulips and haven't mentioned it. Is this just leftover hostility from misunderstanding that "the peninsula" does not mean the kitsap peninsula unless you are in the Greater Seattle Area++ ? A tad patronizingly phrased I realize, but geeze are you shifting the goalposts and that's frustrating.
Anyways, I dislike these quote-heavy replies but sometimes they're the only expedient way to address everything:
Yes. Lemmy has a huge concentration of queer people, and the queer community both sticks together and is not, on the whole, very large. You made your initial comment to contribute an alternative option for other queer/trans refugees to consider, much as I made my initial comment to highlight the need for caution around specific aspects that often go unmentioned in the greater conversation. Even if nobody is directly influenced by reading your comment, the people who go on to repeat your ideas may indeed influence other people - this is a core aspect of how human communication functions.
Yes again, though not the brain part. This literally happens every day. It's a huge part of the reason why queer youths make up nearly a third of the homeless population in king county. It's something I donate a fair amount of my time working to mitigate. For thousands of people in our community who are living in red states, it literally is this black and white. They're fleeing - a process during which people are not generally known to sit down and do the prudent thing like make a budget spreadsheet.
I don't think you understand how bad it is inside WA for queer people. But I also don't know how you could possibly have drawn this conclusion from what I've said so far, so I'm willing to chalk it down to heated tempers and gloss over it if you are.
While I am sincerely glad you are okay, I think you may not realize how lucky you actually are. More than 50% of queer people in the US make less than $50k a year, and fully 35% make less than $30,000. I'm glad you were able to find housing, but the reality in which we live is that fucktons of queer people (literal thousands in many application pools) need help to live here - the entire premise of the above article - and offering areas that have seen some of the sharpest COL increases in the country over the last two years as an alternative is not helpful. And yes, I do understand that you never said they were cheap, just cheaper than seattle. It's just that the $400 difference between paying $1750 and $2150 a month in rent isn't particularly relevant when the most you can afford is $500.