Taylor Brown: Economic climate and federal hostility
Brown describes surging affordability crises, stagnant wages, and housing market failures, compounded by the Trump administration's weaponization of federal government to roll back LGBTQIA legal protections.
The legacy of discrimination that informs contemporary disparities in the areas of housing insecurity, homelessness, and other critical areas of life must also be understood in the context of the current economic and political climates.
Across our city, state, and nation, most people are waking up every day to ever-declining economic conditions and forecasts not seen in decades.
At a societal level, we are collectively experiencing surging affordability crises across the spectrum of life, increased levels of indebtedness, stagnant wages and employment opportunities, the inability to save money,
and longstanding issues in the housing market that further drive disparities in housing insecurity and homelessness for LGBTQ New Yorkers and other minority communities.
These longstanding market issues include a lack of housing supply in both rental and ownership markets, skyrocketing rental costs, affordable housing deficits, lending barriers and costs,
barriers to home ownership, unfair private sector housing and real estate practices, and lack of meaningful governmental solutions and intervention over decades to address systemic issues.
Concurrently, the Trump administration has weaponized almost every part of the federal government to attack and roll back the progress we have made in establishing LGBTQIA legal equality and government-driven intervention models in redressing systemic discrimination and its collateral consequences.
These macroeconomic conditions and federal political hostility compound and exacerbate the underlying causes of and disparities in housing insecurity and homelessness facing LGBTQ New Yorkers.
As well as other minority and marginalized communities.