By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and SALLY HO, Associated Press

As a transgender man, the words “you’re a girl” gutted Tazz Webster, a taunt hurled at him from the day he moved into his St. Louis apartment.

The government-subsidized building’s manager also insisted on calling Webster by the wrong name, the 38-year-old said, and ridiculed him with shouts of, “You’re not a real man!”

“I just felt like I was being terrorized,” Webster told The Associated Press. “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.

Sex discrimination in the Fair Housing Act

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.

Everything Webster owned was trashed

After being left with permanent injuries in a car crash, Webster, who survives on disability payments, was grateful to move in April 2021 into an apartment near the city’s 1,300-acre (526-hectare) Forest Park, scene of the 1904 World’s Fair and home to museums and a zoo.

His rent was initially less than $200 per month, he said. That is because Branscome Apartments had a contract with the federal government to provide subsidized housing to people with disabilities and low-income seniors.

But the HUD money also comes with strings, said Linda Morris, staff attorney for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, who leads the organization’s housing discrimination work.

“The Equal Access Rule applies to HUD-funded programs and shelters,” said Morris, who doesn’t represent Webster. “If an entity is going to accept federal funding they have to comply.”

Under the rule, HUD-funded housing and programs must provide equal access to everyone regardless of gender identity, and can’t require intrusive questioning.

Four months after the shoving incident, Webster found his door kicked in and his belongings trashed, even though, he said, he was up to date on his rent and never received an official eviction notice.

Gone were his king-size bed, dishes, Social Security card and birth certificate. Even worse was the loss of the obituary for his mother, who died when he was 12, and her necklace, a treasured memento.

“I had nothing,” said Webster, who had been mostly staying away from the apartment for fear of another run-in with the manager. “I was so afraid to be there, I would go to my friend’s house and spent nights at a time and then come back, switch my clothes,” and leave.

Court records in an eviction case filed against Webster in April 2022 cited repeated unsuccessful efforts to serve him. After he was gone, the case was dropped.

Last August, Webster filed a lawsuit in Missouri state court alleging he was illegally evicted.

“There was never a court order allowing them to change the locks, allowing them to throw away his belongings,” said attorney KB Doman of Arch City Defenders, an advocacy group representing Webster.

The suit seeks $25,000 in property damage and for “severe emotional stress and trauma.” The apartment has denied the allegations in court filings.

Stephen Strum, the attorney representing the building, declined the AP’s requests for comment on the HUD case and said the pending lawsuit “merely alleges that my client did not properly follow the steps for evicting.”

To Doman, Webster’s case reflects a larger trend.

“A lot of people that would have some recourse, at least through HUD investigating, really are just out on their own now,” she said. “It’s going to be harder for trans people to find safe, stable housing, and it’s very hard already.”

Closure of Webster’s case is just one of many, HUD attorneys say

Since Turner took the helm at HUD, the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity has instructed staff to pause investigations of all gender identity discrimination cases, according to two HUD attorneys who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs or benefits.

One said letters were then issued closing the cases for lack of jurisdiction. HUD has not disclosed how many cases have been dropped.

Webster’s letter and another provided to the AP cite Trump’s executive order calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.

Morris, of the ACLU, said she has never seen an executive order cited in a jurisdictional closure of a complaint.

“So that’s really alarming,” said Morris, who described the closures as “very much consistent with this administration’s broader attacks on trans people and on civil rights more broadly.”

Asked about policy changes concerning transgender discrimination, HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett said the agency was enforcing the Fair Housing Act while implementing Trump’s executive order “restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

In a statement citing Trump’s order, she said government policy recognizes two sexes that “are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

‘A nationwide federal push to erase trans identity’

Bea Gonzalez, a transgender man, was kicked out of a suburban St. Louis domestic violence shelter on a chilly night in November 2021, along with his three children, then 2, 5 and 7.

The family was just settling into a room after filling out paperwork at Bridgeway Behavioral Health Women’s Center when Gonzalez was told they had to go because he disclosed he was a transgender man.

“I wasn’t about to go back into the closet,” the 33-year-old said of his insistence on telling the truth even after it was suggested he keep his trans identity secret.

He needed a domestic violence shelter, he said, for greater security for the children and because he feared for his safety as a trans man in a men’s shelter, some of which don’t accept children anyway.

The city had no domestic violence shelters for men, said his attorney Kalila Jackson. “In the St. Louis metropolitan area, there was no place else for him to go. There were no other options.”

The family was sent to a motel, but when they arrived they discovered it hadn’t been paid for, and the organization that sent them there was closed. “So I was stranded,” said Gonzalez, who did not have a car. “I had to call a friend who was able to let us stay for the night.”

Jackson said Bridgeway received HUD funding and that its policy of barring transgender men was a violation of the Equal Access Rule and “straight up sex discrimination.”

Jackson said the message the shelter sent was this: “You’re biologically a girl, you should dress as a girl. Since you say that you are a man, we are not going to accept you here.”

HUD didn’t address Gonzalez’s or Webster’s complaints when the AP sought comment on their cases.

HUD investigated Gonzalez’s complaint for 2 1/2 years until it suddenly notified him in March the agency was dropping it without a finding. The company operating the shelter, Preferred Family Healthcare, did not respond to the AP’s requests for comment.

After 455 days of being shuttled between six shelters in six cities in two states — Missouri and Illinois — Gonzalez ultimately found stable housing, where his children live with him part time.

He sees what happened as part of what he describes as a “nationwide federal push to erase trans identity.”

Shelters struggle to comply with Trump directives

Advocates are concerned by HUD’s shift, noting high rates of discrimination — and homelessness — among people who are LGBTQ+.

Nearly one-third of trans people say they have been homeless at some point in their lives, while 70% who stayed in a shelter reported being harassed, assaulted or kicked out because of their gender identity, according to an Advocates for Trans Equality survey released in 2015, a year before Obama expanded protections for trans people in shelters.

Teens who come out to families who aren’t accepting are particularly at risk, said Ann Olivia, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Some shelters that might have served them in the past are becoming less welcoming now amid upheaval with the Equal Access Rule, Olivia said.

“Folks who are trans just won’t go if they don’t think that they’re going to be treated with respect,” she said, adding that is particularly problematic for young people who are “vulnerable to sex traffickers and to other types of abuse.”

Further complicating the situation are seemingly contradictory requirements in new HUD contracts with nonprofits that find permanent housing and run shelters for the homeless. One section stipulates they can’t promote “gender ideology” while another requires compliance with anti-discrimination law, according to a copy provided to the AP.

Organizations say they are confused.

“What is promoting gender ideology? What does that mean?” asked Jeannette Ruffins, CEO of Homeward NYC, a nonprofit that runs three permanent housing sites for LGBTQ+ young adults, as well as a homeless shelter.

“Does housing LGBTQ young adults promote gender identity?” she asked. “You know, they’re coming to us. This is already their gender identity. Like I’m not promoting it.”

Ruffins called a board meeting to discuss potential “vulnerabilities” on their website, something she said most New York City nonprofits were doing as well.

Her organization made small changes to their website, saying they were LGBTQ+ “affirming and friendly” in a few places rather than LGBTQ+ “serving,” hoping that will make them less of a target.

In Memphis, Tennessee, a nonprofit that provides emergency shelter for transgender people is looking to increase capacity because of the uncertainty.

Kayla Gore, executive director of My Sistah’s House, said it can do that because it doesn’t take federal funding.

“People are confused,” Gore said. “They don’t know what to do because they want to protect their bottom line.”

‘This is the world’

Nearly three years after losing his apartment, Webster remains homeless, staying with friends and sometimes sleeping on the floor.

He is on a waiting list for subsidized housing because he can’t afford rent otherwise. But he expects the massive federal funding cuts and Trump administration directives banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives will make the wait even longer.

“Let’s be honest. This is the world,” he said. “People, they do hateful things. If you legalize them to hating, then they feel like they have a right.”