The First City-Funded Trans Homeless Shelter Wasn’t In New York, it Was in San Francisco
The Taimon Booton Navigation Center, a shelter for homeless trans people in San Francisco. has been through many struggles, but former staff are proud of what they accomplished with the first city-funded shelter dedicated to serving the trans community.
Staff cut the ribbon and Joaquin Guerrero speaks at the opening of the Taimon Booton Navigation Center in San Francisco, March 7, 2022. All photos by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, public domain unless indicated otherwise.
by Pax Ahimsa Gethen
Earlier this month, New York City announced the opening of a shelter, Ace’s Place, for trans people experiencing homelessness. Covered in national publications including NBC News and The Advocate, Ace’s Place was hailed as the nation’s first city-funded shelter specifically for trans and gender non-conforming individuals.
While I was glad of this good news for trans New Yorkers, I was unsure about the accuracy of the first-in-the nation claim, as I had personally witnessed the opening of a city-funded, trans-specific shelter in San Francisco three years prior. As an employee of the Office of Transgender Initiatives, I attended and photographed the opening of the Taimon Booton Navigation Center in 2022, as well as the earlier opening of transitional housing for trans people in 2020. Both were part of the Our Trans Home SF initiative that was funded by the city, along with rental subsidies for trans residents, in 2019.
Melanie Ampon, then member of the SF Human Rights Commission, speaks at a press conference at the San Francisco Trans March, June 28, 2019, surrounded by people holding signs reading “It’s time to end trans homelessness! #OurTransHomeSF” and a banner for El/La Para TransaLatinas. Photo licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
To verify and get more details on San Francisco’s trans housing programs, I reached out to Joaquin Guerrero (he/him), inaugural director of Our Trans Home SF. A two-spirit trans man of mixed indigenous Mexican and white heritage, Guerrero became a U.S. citizen this January. He previously experienced chronic homelessness himself, living out of his car and doing survival sex work for years after coming out as trans. With the support of trans activists Ceyenne Doroshow and Janetta Johnson, he learned about advocacy, and eventually became board chair at St. James Infirmary, a clinic for sex workers that was in operation from 1999 through 2023.
Joaquin Guerrero speaks at the opening of Our Trans Home SF transitional housing, January 23, 2020.
At St. James, Guerrero leveraged his lived experience to inform the Our Trans Home SF program. “When I started, due to the pandemic and major changes in the program, there were residents in the transitional home, but no staff,” he recollected. Alongside fellow trans advocates JM Jaffee from Lyon-Martin Community Health, Akira Jackson from TAJA’s Coalition, and Durt O’Shea, “We rebuilt the infrastructure, rehired staff, and created policies to meet equity goals — all as unpaid work, because the need was urgent. We didn’t feel okay neglecting the needs of our marginalized trans community who were living in the program with no structured support.”
Dubbed the Bobbi Jean Baker House after the late Black trans activist and minister, the transitional housing location moved to the Mission District after the January 2020 opening in Chinatown. Guerrero stated this was necessary because a “predatory landlord [...] created uninhabitable living conditions for our residents”. Remaining in operation until the closure of St. James Infirmary in 2023, the new location featured a beautiful Victorian home with a new interior, brand new furnishings, and a garden, “exactly what our community deserves as reparation from the city.”
Under Guerrero’s leadership, in 2022 the Our Trans Home SF program took on the Taimon Booton Navigation Center, a city-funded shelter for trans and gender-nonconforming residents. The center was named after a gender non-conforming youth that Guerrero had supported at a public shelter along with a fellow trans advocate of color, Britt Creech. Booton had passed away, and Guerrero believes their death could have been prevented. “I was committed to opening a shelter where trans people could receive competent care”, he said. Having experienced transphobia at cis-run shelters, he wanted to “create a space where unhoused trans people could be served by trans staff, who could earn well above minimum wage, and express their gender without fear.”
Britt Creech speaks at the opening of the Taimon Booton Navigation Center, March 7, 2022.
At the new shelter, Guerrero recalled that there was “genuine positive energy” at first. With the support and connections of managing site director Britt Creech, who had substantial previous shelter experience, residents were treated to “group outings like bowling and theatre trips, luxury donations of brand-name clothes and cosmetics, even pet supplies.” Guerrero and Creech also successfully advocated for higher hourly rates for their staff than other shelters typically paid.
Guerrero moved into an apartment near the center so he could be on call 24/7, as they lacked funding for round-the-clock staff. “I was responding to police calls, incidents of violence, and attacks on our residents,” he recalled. Sometimes working up to 80 hours a week, he found the level of work unsustainable. “I was one person overseeing a program that went from seven staff to around 57 staff and hundreds of clients; I was far from my best self in the end,” he acknowledged.
From his perspective, predominantly cis white leaders at St. James undermined the efforts of Guerrero and Creech to run the Taimon Booton center effectively. He holds that leadership responsible for what he described as “a toxic and unsustainable environment”. Others have had different things to say about what was, by all accounts, a messy and distressing end to a worthy project.
Heartbroken and burnt out, Guerrero filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC, and resigned to prioritize his health. In August 2023, St. James Infirmary announced that it was closing down.
Despite the obstacles and friction he faced there, Guerrero praised the organization’s accomplishments. “It was always a scrappy organization that gave opportunities to sex workers, LGBT people, and people of color with lived experience. I received years of free therapy and the best medical care I had ever had there when I was a client.”
Following the closure of St. James in December 2023, management of the Taimon Booton Navigation Center was taken over by the San Francisco Community Health Center. I noted that the current website for the TBNC includes cisgender women as guests alongside trans, gender-nonconforming, and intersex individuals. Guerrero said that this inclusion is not actually new. “Because of legal threats and right-wing lawsuits, we were never able to explicitly exclude cis women,” he said. “Even the trans guaranteed income pilot was shut down in a lawsuit for excluding other populations.”
Nevertheless, Guerrero maintains that San Francisco had the honor of launching the first government-funded trans housing program that includes a shelter. “The shelter was part of a larger program that also included a transitional home and rental subsidies — together, these created a ladder out of homelessness,” he explained. He honors the history of the Our Trans Home SF program, which at one point employed more than 40 trans staff members.
Guerrero also called attention to the End Trans Homelessness initiative, launched in 2022, which aims to end homelessness of trans people in San Francisco by 2027. “Today, hundreds of people are being housed through subsidies that came out of this work,” Guerrero said. “It’s a major legacy, even if not fully recognized; it was designed to be replicated in other cities across the country. I hope other cities and states will take on initiatives to End Trans Homelessness as well.”
Asked what advice he has for trans advocates seeking government-funded services in other cities, Guerrero responded, “Secure non-reimbursable funds to avoid instability. Provide 24/7 culturally competent security rather than relying on peer staff. Offer therapy for staff and participants to prevent burnout. Ensure organizations, not city departments, control 100% of admissions. And remind cities that larger budgets for trans programs aren’t luxuries — they’re necessities due to higher acuity levels at the intersections of violence.”
Back at the navigation center, the memory of Taimon Booton lives on in his bicycle, lodged in the site’s only tree, which was converted into an altar. (The tree and bicycle can be seen in this short video feature about the center, published in September 2024.) “Their spirits live on — their contributions, and the legacy of what we created, should not be forgotten,” Guerrero said. “They paved the way for a future where, for the first time, we have places of our own.”
Pax Ahimsa Gethen (they/them) is a queer agender writer, editor, and curator. They live in San Francisco with their spouse Ziggy.