A St. Louis man says he was subjected to relentless taunts and misgendering by his apartment building manager, highlighting the discrimination faced by transgender individuals.
Tazz Webster, 38, a transgender man living in government-subsidized housing, told The Associated Press that he endured constant ridicule from the building’s manager. According to Webster, the manager repeatedly called him “a girl,” refused to use his correct name, and mocked him with shouts of “You’re not a real man!”
“I just felt like I was being terrorized,” Webster shared, describing the emotional toll of the manager’s actions. “I felt that I was being judged and mistreated, like I was less of a human being.”
Then one day in March 2022, the manager shoved Webster so hard he stumbled backward. After regaining his balance, Webster said he pushed the manager back. Four months later he was homeless.
Webster filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity office, the agency tasked with investigating housing discrimination and enforcing the landmark Fair Housing Act that guarantees equal access to housing for all Americans.
Webster’s harassment allegation was serious enough that it was investigated for more than two years, until the office suddenly notified him in February it was dropping his case without a finding, citing lack of jurisdiction.
The timing of the closure was not a coincidence.
In the months since President Donald Trump took back the White House and installed a loyalist to lead the federal housing department, HUD Secretary Scott Turner and his team have moved swiftly and strategically to undo, uproot and remake the agency’s decades of work and priorities.
In the crosshairs is an intense focus on transgender people, as HUD retreats from long-established fair-housing protections by closing their discrimination complaints and, more broadly, moving to undo the Obama-era Equal Access Rule that cemented transgender people’s rights to discrimination protection in housing.
“It’s time to get rid of all the far-left gender ideology and get government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in his own image — male and female,” Turner said in announcing in February that he was halting enforcement of the Equal Access Rule.
At issue is the fact that discrimination against LGBTQ+ people wasn’t specifically cited in the Fair Housing Act. But the Equal Access Rule enacted in 2012 under former President Barack Obama further defined sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
The policy was expanded in 2016 to cover transgender people seeking help at federally funded emergency shelters, escalating opposition from the right.
In 2020, the first Trump administration unsuccessfully moved to relieve shelters of any obligation to serve transgender people. Now, advocates fear an emboldened Trump will go further and forbid shelters from accommodating gender identity altogether, as his administration announces unspecified revisions to the Equal Access Rule.
“Our protections can’t be a pingpong ball that changes every four years,” said Seran Gee, an attorney for Advocates for Trans Equality.
