ACTIVISM
Princess Janae Place Serves Homeless Trans NYers
On Trans Day of Visibility’s eve, Bronx agency ran Instagram moment at GLAAD
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
On the eve of the International
Transgender Day
of Visibility, observed
March 31, a fi ve-yearold
Bronx-based LGBTQ social
service referral organization that
focuses on the housing needs of
trans New Yorkers, got a big boost
from GLAAD.
Jevon Martin, who founded Princess
Janae Place in 2015, took over
the Instagram account for GLAAD
on March 30. Martin used the opportunity
to preview the following
day’s celebration of transgender
visibility, talk about the history
of the day, highlight the critical
housing, employment, and social
service needs of the trans community,
and shine a light on Princess
Janae Place’s work — which
has included the placement of 90
transgender New Yorkers into permanent
housing.
Princess Janae Place, named
for a member of the New York ballroom
scene who had a 25-year career
as a nightclub entertainer before
her death from cancer in 2013,
is a small shop with big ambitions.
Its staff — three full-time and two
part-time — include two housing
specialists who work to connect
housing-insecure trans clients
and other members of the LGBTQ
community with temporary, transitional,
and permanent housing.
One of those specialists works
out of the group’s offi ce on Wallace
Avenue near Boston Road in the
Allerton section of the Bronx. The
other splits their time between the
Callen-Lorde Community Health
Center’s locations in the South
Bronx and in Chelsea.
When Martin spoke to Gay City
News, however, he himself was doing
the housing placement legwork
because the coronavirus crisis had
temporarily closed Princess Janae
Place’s doors.
The previous Friday evening,
he had received a call about a
21-year-old trans youth who was
sheltering in a stairwell in a Bronx
apartment house. The young man
had lived in several LGBTQ-friendly
Jevon Martin, who founded Princess Janae Place in 2015.
homeless youth housing facilities,
but because he is still in the
midst of his transitioning, he said,
he often felt uncomfortable around
his housemates. Martin managed
to get him a motel room through
the weekend, but that venue had
a three-night maximum stay, and
the scramble was on when Monday
came to get him certifi ed by the
city Department of Homeless Services
— which handles adults but
not minors who are without housing.
The DHS certifi cation, in turn,
would give the youth a chance to
move into Marsha’s House, a shelter
for LGBTQ young adults up to
30, located in the South Bronx.
“Marsha’s House is a good place
for gender non-conforming and
non-binary folks,” Martin explained.
Though Princess Janae Place’s
primary focus is on transgender
clients — who make up nearly 60
percent of the total — it also serves
a signifi cant number of gay, lesbian,
and bisexual cisgender clients,
and four percent of all clients identify
as non-binary.
More than half of its clients hail
from the Bronx, but fully a quarter
are from Brooklyn. Nearly 80
percent of clients are black, with
Asian Americans making up the
second largest group, at roughly
one out of eight.
COURTESY OF JEVON MARTIN
Housing insecurity is the issue
that Princess Janae Place is most
focused on, but in the course of
their work staff there encounter a
full range of social service needs
their clients arrive with. The issues
that Martin said most often holds
people back are mental health
challenges, and his organization
has built up a group of agency referrals
he is confi dent can competently
and sensitively serve transgender
clients.
HIV-positive clients also visit the
agency, though Martin noted they
are often easy to help with housing
since most of them are also clients
of the city’s HIV/ AIDS Services
Administration, which provides
support to poz folks with fi nancial
need.
“It’s those who are HIV-negative
that we have the biggest problem
with,” he explained, since there is
no easy slot to place them in to get
them on the path to permanent
housing.
Martin and Princess Janae
Place are strong advocates of the
city redoubling its efforts to combat
homelessness by creating more
housing that is truly affordable to
New Yorkers who are the economically
least advantaged, and the
agency is working on plans for the
third annual Walk Away Homelessness
in New York trek in August
to raise money and awareness
to combat what has been a mushrooming
need in recent years.
But Martin said that Princess
Janae Place is not content to wait
on government or to rely on other
housing providers to serve their
clients. His long-term goal is to
partner with a developer to build a
facility to provide studio and onebedroom
apartments and a dropin
center for clients as well as offi ce
space for the agency.
For now, Martin works hard
to identify sources of funding to
grow his agency’s reach. Over the
past three years, the city’s health
department, through its Public
Health Solutions initiative, has
given increasing annual grants for
capacity-building — as opposed to
direct services — to Princess Janae
Place. In the current year, that
funding amounts to $250,000.
The agency was also recently
awarded a two-year grant totaling
$200,00 from pharmaceutical giant
Gilead to support its housing
placement work.
Much of the rest of the agency’s
funding comes from individual donations
as well as its annual Princess
Pageant.
Martin is a veteran of the city’s
ballroom scene, having been the
father to a series of houses, including
most recently the House of Legacy.
He is also the current holder of
the Mr. Trans New York USA title.
Asked about the signifi cance of
overseeing the GLAAD Instagram
account for a day and of the International
Transgender Day of Visibility
itself, Martin said, “Visibility
is what will take us to where we
need to be.”
At the same time, he emphasized
that public visibility is not always
a safe option for transgender folks
everywhere.
“Your visibility is for your safety,”
Martin said, adding there are
many ways to support Princess Janae
Place behind the scenes. “Volunteering
need not be public. You
don’t need to be on the front lines.
You can push out social media and
email. You can answer phones for
us.”
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