Rainbow Homestead: A Shelter from Silence, A Stand for Justice

When Safety Nets Fail

When my stepfamily was evicted for receiving SSI, it wasn’t just a personal crisis—it was a glaring example of how systemic oppression quietly works behind closed doors. They weren’t evicted for breaking a lease or missing rent. They were displaced because safety nets meant to protect us triggered policies that punished us instead. And they are not alone.

This country has a long and painful history of racial inequality, made worse for those who also belong to the LGBTQ+ community. Queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC) often experience housing discrimination and poverty at the sharpest edges—due not to who we are, but to how systems are structured against us. In response, I began building Rainbow Homestead—a grassroots, multicultural refuge dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ individuals and families pushed to the margins. This is public sociology in action: transforming theory into tools for survival.

As a queer, Native and Latina woman, I carry generations of resistance in my blood. The work I do with Rainbow Homestead isn’t abstract—it’s ancestral. I come from communities who have been displaced, silenced, and yet still find ways to gather, grow, and fight for each other. This multicultural lens shapes everything we do—from the languages we speak around our table, to the way we value land stewardship, to how we honor both cultural identity and queer liberation without asking anyone to leave parts of themselves at the door.

Where Sociology Meets Survival

Public sociology challenges us to look beyond textbooks and into the streets, shelters, and courtrooms where injustice thrives. One powerful concept that shaped my understanding of this work is intersectionality, coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. Intersectionality reminds us that people don’t live single-issue lives—especially not those of us who are queer, trans, Indigenous, Black, disabled, or undocumented. We live at the crossroads of identities that carry both pride and prejudice.

At Rainbow Homestead, that understanding is fundamental. We don’t just serve the LGBTQ+ community; we serve the whole person. That includes people of color dealing with generational trauma, refugees navigating language barriers, disabled folks wrestling with inaccessible systems, and survivors of family rejection trying to build chosen families of their own.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote about “social capital”—the resources people can access through networks, relationships, and community. Most of the people we serve were denied that capital from the start. So we build it from scratch: potlucks, storytelling circles, mutual aid nights, and skill shares. These aren’t charity—they’re survival strategies rooted in love.

The Structural Violence of Policy

There’s a myth that poverty is the fault of the poor. But sociologists like Johan Galtung have long pointed out the real culprit: structural violence. It’s the slow, grinding harm caused by institutional indifference—housing policies that criminalize poverty, welfare programs that punish disability, and healthcare systems that exclude trans and undocumented people. This isn’t just sociology; it’s lived reality.

When my family was uprooted because of how SSI income is counted in public housing decisions, it exposed how easily vulnerable people can be discarded. We need to name that harm—not as a mistake, but as a design flaw of a system that was never built to protect all of us.

Our Queer, Multicultural Answer

Rainbow Homestead isn’t just a nonprofit—it’s a movement. Our multicultural team reflects the communities we serve. We are learning to speak our native languages along with ASL. We’re survivors of displacement, of conversion therapy, of incarceration. And we know that “safe housing” is not just a roof—it’s cultural safety, language access, gender affirmation, and community accountability.

In a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under legislative attack across the country—particularly targeting trans youth and queer people of color—we’re planting roots. Literally. We’re building garden plots, healing circles, and cooperative housing on land that was long denied to people like us.

But we can’t do it alone.

A Call to Action

If you believe housing is a human right, join us.
If you believe that queer people of color deserve more than bare survival, amplify our voices.
If you’ve ever felt invisible in your own community, build one with us.

Here’s how you can help:

• Support Rainbow Homestead through donations, supplies, or time

• Advocate for fair housing reform in your city or state—especially policies that protect LGBTQ+ and disabled tenants

• Educate yourself and your community on intersectional justice—because none of us are free until all of us are

• Share this story. Talk about it. Make it public

This isn’t a sob story or a charity pitch. It’s a blueprint. A way forward. Public sociology isn’t meant to sit on a shelf; it’s meant to live in the hands of people fighting for change.

Rainbow Homestead is still growing—but we’re not waiting for permission to exist. We’re planting seeds in concrete and watching them bloom.