The Power and Promise of TLGBQIA+-owned Spaces

This report from the LISC Community Research and Impact team explores LGBTQIA+ capital access, community ownership as a strategy for building queer and trans community and economic power, and the financing and organizing resources needed to expand this work.

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Executive Summary

TLGBQIA+ communities have long creatively claimed space to find supportive community, provide essential resources like housing, food, and healthcare, and build power to fight for liberation. Yet more than 50 years after the movement for queer and trans liberation began, TLGBQIA+ ownership of space is still relatively rare, particularly for organizations led by TGNC people of color. A brief increase in funding in the wake of 2020 racial justice uprisings and pandemic relief enabled some TLGBQIA+ organizations throughout the country to realize decades-long dreams of community ownership and purchase their first buildings, an important step toward a future in which all communities can live with dignity and safety. In some cases, this resulted in acquiring the first-ever spaces owned by Black and Latine queer and TGNC organizations in their communities. But a drop-off in funding since 2020 threatens organizations’ ability to sustain and grow this work at a time when it is urgently needed.

TLGBQIA+ people are facing an alarming rise in attacks on their lives and rights. At least 500 anti-TLGBQIA+ bills were introduced in 2024, including laws criminalizing drag performances, censoring discussion of TLGBQIA+ topics in schools, and restricting access to affirming healthcare for TGNC adults and youth. Rooted in a long history of criminalization, violence, and policing of TLGBQIA+ communities, these policies have accompanied violent demonstrations and attacks on TLGBQIA+ people and organizations. This onslaught compounds the violence and economic insecurity that TLGBQIA+ people were already more likely to experience. TLGBQIA+ people and especially BIPOC TGNC people are disproportionately likely to experience poverty, housing insecurity, and homelessness, for example, and severe funding inequities further challenge the long-term survival of TLGBQIA+ organizations and spaces.

This report explores TLGBQIA+ community ownership as a strategy for building community and economic power, and the financing and organizing resources needed to expand this work. As one of the first qualitative studies to bring together research on TLGBQIA+ economic inequities and queer and trans placemaking with insights from TLGBQIA+ leaders at the forefront of community ownership efforts, we explore the wealth, asset, and capital disparities for TLGBQIA+ people and organizations; lessons from established and emerging organizations, including how longstanding practices of mutual aid and community care inform TLGBQIA+ community ownership efforts; and short- and long-term grant, capital, and capacity-building needs and opportunities.

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