Preferred housing option for transgender students on Hill costly

To feel comfortable and safe in their living situation comes with a higher price tag for many transgender students living on the Hill.

In 2013, UCLA Housing officials expanded options for transgender residents with the new Gender, Sexuality and Society theme community on a floor in De Neve Plaza and gender-neutral housing in multiple dorm buildings, where students of different genders are allowed to share a room. But the most preferred option for the transgender community – rooms with private bathrooms – is one of the Hill’s most expensive housing choices.

There are no statistics available for the number of transgender students at UCLA, though Raja Bhattar, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus Resource Center, estimates it is somewhere between 50 and 400 students.

“None of our institutions are built for (transgender) people. Changing (institutional structures) often takes longer than the students have time for,” Bhattar said.

In a national survey, about 53 percent of transgender respondents reported having been harassed in a public place, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality’s national transgender discrimination survey.

For some at UCLA, one of the safest places on campus is the Gender, Sexuality and Society floor in De Neve Birch.

The floor houses about 30 people and focuses on educational and social events surrounding gender identity and the LGBT community.

“One of the first things people tend to do is ask, ‘What are your pronouns?’ Names, interests and pronouns,” said Nyala Carbado, a first-year history student who lives on the floor and identifies as genderqueer.

Carbado added that one of the reasons the floor feels safer is because plazas include private bathrooms, which can eliminate the often anxiety-inducing decision of which bathroom to use.

The floor also provides a community of people with similar life experiences, said Erin Kelley, a first-year political science student who identifies as transgender. She added that she would prefer to live in cheaper housing options for the transgender community if they were available.

“There no other options for me,” said Kelley, who lived on the floor this year and plans on living there again next year. To avoid discrimination and form a sense of community, Kelley only seriously considered the themed floor.

The themed floor option comes at a cost of about $3,000 more a year for a plaza room compared to one in a residence hall, the cheapest on-campus housing option, which is an inconvenience for some students.

Kelley said she and a couple other transgender students on the floor sent emails in fall to housing officials to express their concerns over the housing costs but have not received a response yet.

Though gender-neutral housing is available in Dykstra Hall, which offers cheaper rooms, residence halls generally feature shared, gendered bathrooms which are often a source of anxiety for transgender students, Carbado said.

Another reason UCLA Housing chose a plaza for the themed floor was to ensure that all people assigned to the themed floor are willing to participate, which can be a challenge on larger floors, said Sarah Quinn, director of Housing, and Brian MacDonald, director of residential education.

UCLA Housing officials said they want to work with students to continue to develop housing options for the transgender community and ensure all students are placed in the best fit.

This year, Housing expanded the gender options on its applications to include “transgender,” “questioning” or “queer” to better understand students’ needs. Housing officials plan to reach out to transgender students this year before they are assigned roommates to explain their options to them and help them decide their best housing choice, Quinn said.

The new application system is meant to help students like Bo Hwang, a first-year undeclared student, who said he had one roommate ask for a different assignment over summer because he identifies as a transgender man.

Even in Hwang’s gender studies classes, students and teachers refer to him by the wrong gender. And he said his female roommates, though mostly understanding, make insensitive remarks, like asking why he tries to look like a man.

Though he identifies as male, he is officially female in UCLA’s records and was thus placed with female roommates.

While Hwang was explaining his frustration about continuously having to talk about his preferred gender, an acquaintance greeted Hwang to say that “she” was hard to find on Facebook.

“See what I mean? I explained it to (her) twice,” he said. “I am constantly educating and re-educating people about my preferred pronouns. It’s exhausting.”

The new application process will allow Housing to open lines of communication with transgender students like Hwang more easily to gauge their needs, Quinn said.

“It is a double-edged sword; we do really good work to support (transgender) students but there is always room for improvement,” Bhattar said. “As our students express more complexities within their transgender identities, our ability to support them becomes more complex.”