Housing St John's Camp

Queertopia has been working alongside St John’s for years to provide resources and support towards housing. This historically Black neighborhood is constantly being gentrified- pushed out of their legacy homes and treated like strangers in a town they created. The city continues to do Nothing proactive to preserve these homes and help these families thrive.

From 2021-2022, Queertopia did not stop pressuring the city until 40 members of St John’s camp were picked up for housing- the highest number of women and highest number of Black Austinites the city has ever included in their HEAL program. The city previously claimed this camp would never be a HEAL site. We worked together with the camp as a family to build cold weather structures, get all of their documents, all of their warrants dropped, start housing applications, etc.

Unfortunately, many of those folks were kicked out of the city’s housing program due to lack of understanding of trauma informed care, lack of harm reduction, and lack of community partnerships- shutting the campers off from their support systems. Flash to 2023- due to construction, the park will be completely demolished and it will be even more difficult to find our friends who we have been raising funds for years for.

In the time this Open Collective has been up- y’all have supported us getting 15 people into housing at Community First Village, with 6 peoples’ rent being paid for an entire year before they successfully took rent over via jobs or benefits. Funds were also used for emergency assistance to avoid evictions for anyone else when late. EVERY person Queertopia has financially assisted has been Black or Indigenous AND either an elder, queer, or a sex worker. Our current waitlist is comprised only of Black and Indigenous sex workers. It is gross that we have to default to CFV, which is on the outskirts of Austin and who evicts tenants on the 2nd month rent is late, as opposed to keeping Black Austinites in their neighborhoods- but this is Austin’s current liberal wet dream of a homelessness solution and the only tangible option for folks without vouchers.

We urgently need one more Reparations backer to replace a wonderful donor who had to rebudget after a year of contributing rent. We are responsible for 3 people’s rent but now only have 2 backers. We only have 3 more folks on our multi year long waitlist before reopening it! Can you help us get to 6 monthly funders?



*For transparency- Queertopia was not initially financially responsible for the waitlist made in 2022 with two other organizations, but once HEAL came through, the very well funded org who was approved $100k to payroll the campers at CFV abandoned all responsibility, leaving QT with the choice of abandoning the waitlist as well or spending years finding funding on our own, through incredible community like you. We do not abandon our friends. If Queertopia has one golden rule- it is always be intentional, always be transparent. Housing is a human right.

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PSS: That whole "today's balance" thing is really frustratingly inaccurate.