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 open arms, 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 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 statewide population, 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.”
Though no one tracks the migration of LGBTQ+ people from one place to another, a poll conducted by NORC suggests that roughly 400,000 trans adults fled red states in the six months after the 2024 election, a time when President Donald Trump issued a slew of executive orders aimed at restricting nearly every facet of trans life. Another 1.2 million trans people were estimated to be considering such moves.
In the year since, the need for aid has skyrocketed, nonprofit leaders say, as states such as Kansas and Idaho have stripped trans people of their drivers’ licenses and threatened to jail them if they didn’t use bathrooms that conform to the sex they were assigned at birth. Meanwhile, private donations have shrunk and grant opportunities have disappeared as Trump warns against using federal funding to “promote gender ideology.”
Wilson has said she will decide by the end of August whether to authorize a state of emergency, which could free up $2.1 million and create a program to help LGBTQ+ newcomers navigate the city’s social services. In a nearly three-hour council committee meeting in late June, commission members said that without the declaration, some LGBTQ+ organizations might close, further straining the city’s already overtaxed safety net.
“We need help,” LGBTQ Commissioner Kody Allen told the City Council. “Our community needs help. And this is the only place we can get it.”
Seattle has long been known as one of the country’s most trans-friendly cities. It banned discrimination on the basis of gender 40 years ago. Its hospitals were among the first to offer gender transition care to young people. And Washington state was the first in the nation to allow trans athletes to compete.
Those protections have always drawn trans people from elsewhere, but in the years before Trump won reelection, nonprofit leaders say, the numbers were small enough and the newcomers so prepared, that organizations could easily help people settle in. Most arrived with jobs and rental agreements. But after Trump took office and further emboldened conservative lawmakers to strip trans people of rights, Seattle leaders say they began to hear from people with no plan, only a desperate need to move immediately.
“Most people don’t come to us saying, ‘I want to move to Seattle.’ They say, ‘I need to get the hell out now,’” said Aspen Coyle, a program manager for Traction. “It’s been chaos. We have been scaling up as fast as we can, but there is so much need out there. It is this massive, massive wave of people coming in.”
Nearly 400 people have asked for help in the past two months alone. For a nonprofit that took in less than $84,000 in revenue before the election, those requests can feel “immense.” But Coyle and Traction founder Michael Woodward said securing money has become increasingly difficult under Trump. Last year, the organization applied for a dozen grants but won only two small ones — worth just $17,500. Individual donors have stopped giving as much, too, and some are afraid to donate to organizations Trump might consider part of “a radical ideology.”
When Harmony and his boyfriend contacted Traction last year, the couple had nearly no resources to rebuild their lives. They were too young to have amassed any real savings, and they were leaving all of their friends and most of their possessions behind.
A Traction peer navigator met the couple at the airport. Three different couples who volunteer with the group offered to house Harmony and his boyfriend for weeks at a time. The navigator helped Harmony sign up for health insurance and food benefits, and eventually, Traction helped the couple find jobs and enroll in college. A few months ago, the couple signed a lease for their own apartment.
“For the very first time, I felt like I didn’t have to do it all myself,” Harmony said. “We never had to wonder, ‘What are we going to do now?’ They were already thinking ahead of what we might need.”
In a council committee meeting in late June, dozens of trans people told similar stories. A person from Kansas said they lost their job driving a bus after the state forced trans people to surrender their licenses. Others from New Orleans and Georgia said they lost access to medical care. And several described themselves as “refugees” who would have been homeless if not for Seattle’s nonprofits.
Leaders from multiple nonprofits told the council that they were now hearing “every day” from people who were afraid to continue living elsewhere. But Taylor Farley, the executive director of the Queer Power Alliance, said they worried local groups don’t have the resources to help everyone who needs it.
“Our costs are rising nearly twice as fast as our funding is coming in,” said Farley. “Our community is under attack, and organizations protecting LGBTQIA+ people are struggling to survive.” (One conservative influencer in Seattle decried the “emergency” as an attempt by left-wing groups to tap public tax dollars unnecessarily.)
Declaring a civil emergency would be a “significant step,” commission members acknowledged in a letter to Wilson this spring — one that could cost the city $2.1 million if it addresses the immediate needs. Seattle is facing a nearly $500 million shortfall over the next three years, and some city officials have told commission members they worry about the financial feasibility of declaring an emergency. But it’s not without precedent: Eight months ago, city leaders set aside $8 million in discretionary dollars to declare a state of emergency after the federal government cut food stamp funding.
In a written reply, Wilson said that even though the city is facing “challenging budget restraints,” she will “proactively search for ways” to meet the need and ensure Seattle remains “a place of safety, dignity, and inclusion” for LGBTQ+ newcomers.
Though Wilson has not declared the emergency yet, she convened an interdepartmental group that now meets every other week to evaluate the needs and the city’s capacity to address them. She has said that group will make a recommendation by August. (Wilson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)
If the city chooses not to declare a state of emergency, commission leaders said they worry what will happen not only to Seattle’s LGBTQ+ organizations but also to ones that help all city residents. Many of the newcomers need shelter, food aid and subsidized health care. And the city’s homeless population has already reached a record high this year.
Allen, who also works for a youth homeless shelter, said his organization is turning away at least 10 young trans people a night from the shelter because it doesn’t have space.
The one positive nonprofits say they have seen is an uptick in volunteers. Early last year, Traction had only three or five volunteers. Now it has more than 70, including Harmony. In the months since his life stabilized, Harmony has helped other newcomers navigate Seattle. Many have told him they don’t want to leave their home states, but they have to.
“If there’s no state of emergency, we’re still going to have an influx of trans people who have been displaced from their homes, their lives,” Harmony said. “Half of them have no connections. They just want to be able to live safely. So it’s up to us to say, ‘Here is your chance. You deserve one.’”
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