When Stephie Moul got out of prison in May, she had nothing.

After four years and a month behind bars, she found herself returning to the world with no money, no belongings, and nowhere to live. She had spent much of her life houseless, growing up on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. Now, it seemed she would be houseless again.

“I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of,” said Moul, a 33-year-old transgender woman.

Moul was on the streets of Boston, sleeping in a hospital lobby for three days before a Google search changed her life. She searched “transgender shelters,” and the Transgender Emergency Fund (TEF) popped up. It was almost midnight, but Moul emailed the housing director. 

The next day, Moul got a call back. She immediately moved into TEF’s transitional housing program. By some stroke of luck or compassion, Moul now found herself with a bed to sleep on and a roof over her head.

Tucked in a quiet neighborhood in Greater Boston, TEF’s safe home provides a refuge from the discrimination transgender people often face on the streets or in other shelters, with rooms for eight transgender, nonbinary, or gender-diverse residents to live rent-free for up to a year. The kitchen’s dark wood cabinets are always stocked with food. There’s laundry in the basement and a closet of free clothes in the attic. There’s Wi-Fi, heat, and a chore chart. The program is designed to help residents like Moul get back on their feet, work toward stable employment, and save money in the hopes of emerging with reliable income and housing. 

A growing problem

Moul is among more than 29,000 people who experienced homelessness in Massachusetts throughout 2024, according to recent data released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in its annual congressional report. The state saw a 53.4% increase in homelessness since 2023—the third-largest increase in the U.S., behind only New York and Illinois, according to the report. 

But it’s not just in those states that homelessness rates have soared in the last year: HUD also reported an 18.1% jump in homelessness nationwide. About 2,500 of those experiencing homelessness throughout the country were reportedly transgender.

Although they make up a small fraction of the country’s growing houseless population, transgender people are disproportionately prone to houselessness, experts say, especially youth, who often face rejection from unaccepting families. On the streets and in shelters, transgender people experiencing houselessness are subject to heightened rates of violence and discrimination.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality survey from 2015, nearly one-third of trans respondents experienced homelessness at some point in their lives in that last year. Of transgender respondents who tried to access shelters, 70% experienced mistreatment by shelter staff or residents, and more than half of those who stayed at shelters that past year were verbally harassed, physically attacked, or sexually assaulted for being transgender. 

Because of this hostility, some transgender individuals might opt to stay on the streets instead of in a shelter. But this poses a particular risk for gender minorities, who are subject to disproportionate violence, said Pam Klein, the manager of transgender services at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.

Massachusetts is kind of seen as a haven, but that is not 100% true by any means. People do get verbally and/or physically assaulted outside.

Pam Klein, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program

“Outside, people are just more at risk of being victimized, and anti-trans violence,” Klein said. “Massachusetts is kind of seen as a haven, but that is not 100% true by any means. People do get verbally and/or physically assaulted outside.”

Still, Rachel Ellingson, the associate director of behavioral health for St. Francis House, the largest day shelter in Massachusetts, said trans people frequently fall through the cracks at typical shelters, where residents are often separated by gender. That’s why, experts say, programs like the Transgender Emergency Fund are essential. 

And eight rooms aren’t nearly enough.

A place to go

Dion Weston, the housing director of TEF’s safe home, receives desperate phone calls every day. More often than not, Weston must turn the callers down. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of houseless transgender individuals call from all around Massachusetts as well as other states, Weston said.

“This resource can be what determines if someone [lives or] dies,” Weston said. 

After Weston took on the role of housing director this month, she transformed the shelter into a home, adding enrichment activities and an outlined care program. Weston meets with each resident regularly to help with job applications, ID changes, access to medical care, and the search for long-term housing. She said half of the current residents are employed, and the others are looking for work. 

“I can’t really go to bed at night knowing that someone’s going to sleep at night in 40-degree weather with no socks and shoes,” Weston said. “It can be heartbreaking. … Some of them just have nothing.”

Finding herself

Moul’s upbringing was marked by poverty and uncertainty. She moved with her mother and three brothers from Rhode Island to Delaware, where they bounced around the area, never staying in one place for more than a year. By the time she turned 10 years old, Moul had spent restless nights in homeless shelters. Her mom worked fast food jobs but never had a “good job,” Moul said. Minimum wage wasn’t enough to consistently support four kids as a single parent.

As she got older, Moul grew a hardened shell, putting on an outward “tough guy persona” and pushing down her internal grapplings with her gender identity until she began her gender transition in 2017. Even then, she said she felt ashamed and would ask a relative to pick up her hormone treatment prescriptions for her from the pharmacy.

Moul recalled a recent visit to Women’s Lunch Place, a day shelter on Newbury Street that provides meals and resources for women experiencing houselessness. The food was good, Moul said, but she felt unwelcome when she overheard a volunteer say, “We might as well call it Lunch Place instead of Women’s Lunch Place,” when they saw Moul. 

“That’s mad rude to say,” Moul said. “I’m minding my business. … Being transgender, there’s a lot of people that don’t mind their damn business.”

Nancy Armstrong, the chief program officer at Women’s Lunch Place, said the shelter aims to be a safe place for anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of how they look. There have been efforts, Armstrong said, to educate staff, volunteers, and other guests about transgender and nonbinary identities and to promote tolerance and respect. 

“There’s a lot of insensitive … and just really bigoted comments that we hear our guest population making to other people,” Armstrong said. “Women’s Lunch Place is a safe space where everyone deserves their dignity.”

In 2020, Moul was convicted of sending threatening and crude online messages to several women attorneys running for office in other states. She attributed the cyberattacks to a “mental breakdown” surrounding her struggles with her own gender identity. 

“There was nothing sexual about anything I said or did,” she said, adding that her actions were sexualized by prosecutors.

Now, she’s working to turn things around.

“My whole goal right now, from the day I got out of federal prison, was to bury that image I had with the cyberstalking,” Moul said. “And just do so much good stuff that people look back and say, ‘This person really changed their life.’”

Finally, a normal life

The first step toward that goal was obtaining forms of identification. Coming out of prison, Moul didn’t have a birth certificate, Social Security card, or identification document. She had never had a job. 

She got her Social Security card and birth certificate easily but ran into a bit of trouble when she couldn’t verify her address to get an ID card. After a few weeks of discouragement, she finally obtained an ID.

Now, she’s working 20 hours a week stocking shelves at the specialty discount store Five Below, where a TEF staff member knew the hiring manager, who offered Moul an interview. Moul is also eagerly hunting for another job in order to work full-time and hoping to save enough money to land on her feet when her year at TEF ends. She knows that’s a tall task in Boston’s pricey housing market, but she remains determined.

“I feel like a normal citizen,” Moul said. “After everything I’ve been through in life, I got a job, I got a place to live. I got normal people things.”