OFFICE POLITICS
In the face of a trans refugee crisis and other challenges, LGBTQ+ advocates want Seattle’s city government to establish an Office of Trans and Queer Affairs. Local lawmakers seem reluctant.
WRITTEN BY MICAH YIP
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZORN B. TAYLOR
[Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. Local and national resources are available to support those in crisis, including the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (phone number: 988), which operates 24/7.]
Liora Solveig had a plan to end her life.
“I was just so at the end of my rope,” Solveig said, because of what happened when she came out as transgender while living in a conservative state.
Solveig said she was living with her family in Iowa, but they kicked her out in May 2025 when she told them she was trans. She moved in with a friend of 16 years, who, she said, began abusing her after learning about her gender identity. The police didn’t help her, Solveig added, and her state was ramping up anti-trans legislation, including removing gender identity as a protected class from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
“I was just ready to be done,” she said.
But then she heard about TRACTION, a Washington-based nonprofit that helps trans people relocate within the United States, mostly to the Seattle metro area, through their program, Project Open Arms. Solveig applied, and TRACTION elevated her case to emergency status and flew her to Seattle in November 2025.
“Had it not been for them, I would not be here,” Solveig said. “I one-hundred-percent could say that I was ready to kill myself.”
Solveig is one of the estimated 8,000 to 15,000 transgender people who, according to a Gender Justice League (GJL) report published in July, have relocated to Washington State since November 2024. They’re part of a wave of trans and queer internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the United States, who are fleeing red state anti-trans laws and seeking refuge in progressive states and cities.
Would the crisis be better managed if Seattle’s city government had an official Office of Trans and Queer Affairs (OTQA)? The LGBTQ Commission — an advisory body of community volunteers overseen by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (SOCR) — thinks so. The office would handle LGBTQ-focused matters, from policy enforcement and development, to culturally responsive programs and services, to community engagement, according to a Commission proposal.
Local officials have declared Seattle to be a welcoming city to trans and other marginalized people, but the city is struggling to keep up with the rising need for trans services. Trans organizations are strapped for cash. Mayor Katie Wilson’s office declined to declare a civil emergency, despite advocates’ calls to do so. And though advocates say that city leadership is more willing to work with them than ever, efforts to do so have been disorganized: Allegations of SOCR leadership’s queerphobia have been brushed aside; some Commission members feel city staff have discounted their advocacy; and an interdepartmental team addressing queer and trans issues was wrapped up abruptly. With Mayor Wilson’s proposed 2027 – 28 budget now before City Council, the conversation is still live.
Aspen Coyle, program manager of Project Open Arms.
Photograph by Meron Menghistab
“Since Trump came into office, basically every trans organization has seen their funding from… foundations completely gone.”
Needs Rise, Funds Plummet
Since 2021, state legislatures have enacted more than 290 anti-trans laws, a record 109 of them in 2025 alone, GJL reported. And as more people leave those states, demand for services in more welcoming places is climbing. GJL reported that TRACTION helped about 1,500 people relocate since the November 2024 election, compared to about 70 in the 18 months prior.
But funding has moved the other way. Trans-specific funding in Washington saw a 63% drop in foundation support in a single year, GJL reported, largely because of Trump’s Executive Order 14168, which directs federal agencies not to use funds to “promote gender ideology.”
“Since Trump came into office, basically every trans organization has seen their funding from those foundations completely gone to… practically no funding, because all of these foundations are now going to be worried: ‘What if the government investigates us? What if we get in trouble for funding people who promote “gender ideology?”’” said Aspen Coyle, program manager of Project Open Arms.
Private donations have picked up, Coyle said, but not enough to close the gap.
That gap is why advocates are turning to City Hall.
A Willing City with a Fragmented Response
The closest thing Seattle has to a queer-specific office is the LGBTQ Commission. The group consists of 21 commissioners serving a two-year term without pay, advising city departments on queer-related issues. The commission also recommends policies, and facilitates connection between the queer communities and the city. In the spring, they urged Mayor Wilson to declare a civil emergency for trans support, which advocates believe would unlock money for aid. The city has done so before, like in 2015 when then-Mayor Ed Murray declared one for the homelessness crisis.
Wilson agreed in a May 19 letter that a “coordinated, citywide approach” was needed, but said the “most effective and substantive step” was to convene a Trans and Queer Stabilization Interdepartmental Team (TQ IDT). That team eventually included LGBTQ Commissioners, representatives of the Mayor’s Office, staff from the offices of City Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster, and staff from the SOCR, the Department of Neighborhoods, the Human Services Division, the Central Budget Office, and the City Attorney’s Office.
Over a handful of summer meetings, the group discussed various responses, including community resource fairs, trans-supportive shelters and housing, centralized online resources, a hybrid navigator model featuring city staff and community-based peer navigators, and longer-term projects like a 24-hour queer community hub and establishing the OTQA.
While parties agreed that a response was needed to serve trans migrants, they disagreed on the best funding approach: According to LGBTQ Commissioner Ashley Ford, the Commission learned at the end of July that Wilson’s office would neither declare an emergency nor approve its requested $2.2 million budget appropriation for trans support, which Ford said was a “low-ball” amount given the big need. The Commission never got clarity on why the city didn’t go through with an emergency declaration, Ford added, but she thought perhaps the city feared federal intrusion and didn’t believe it would unlock funds.
“That meeting was really kind of a crux point where we were like, ‘Okay, so what are we doing here?’” she said.
They would not be doing much more there. On Aug. 3, a member of SOCR staff emailed the Commission saying the next day’s meeting would be the IDT’s last, which was earlier than anticipated. Instead, staff would “begin our rapid relief plans for 2026 and [set] up our 2027-2028 action items,” the SOCR staff member wrote.
Ford said the notification came as a surprise to the Commission, and miscommunication was a theme throughout the IDT.
“There was a lot of transition within the city, a lot of lack of clarity among leadership and facilitation of the IDT, frustrations on all sides… about the productivity of that space,” Ford said.
The issues extended to the SOCR itself. In March, PubliCola reported that Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith and Deputy Director Fahima Mohamed were placed on leave due to staff allegations of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Erika Pablo, who leads the Human Services Department’s Safe and Thriving Communities Division, is now interim SOCR director, and Ford said the Commission was “very impressed” with Pablo’s leadership.
Ford said that while she couldn’t speak to the exact reasons why the director and deputy were put on leave, she “can affirm that there was active hostility towards trans and queer people within the Office for Civil Rights.”
That’s part of why the Commission wants the OTQA to be a standalone group, rather than housed within the SOCR, Ford said.
“There were a lot of anti-queer sentiments coming from within the Office for Civil Rights, so we know our community really doesn’t have trust with the Office for Civil Rights,” Ford said.
The SOCR said it can’t comment on the allegations. But the SOCR “remains deeply committed to building a city where everyone, especially our 2SLGBTQIA+ community members, are safe and feel like they truly belong,” Communications Advisor Lenée Son said.
While the city needs more infrastructure for all disenfranchised groups, the LGBTQ community has been "particularly impacted by city dysfunction and lack of competency,” Ford said, further justifying a standalone OTQA. She pointed to the anti-trans, right-wing Christian rally at Cal Anderson Park in May 2025, during which Seattle police officers brutalized pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters, perpetuating the historic lack of trust between the police department and queer people.
Seattle officials are “navigating a swiftly growing community of people coming to our city for its welcoming values, without an effective strategy to truly meet the needs of the people already here,” Ford said.
The Commission has pointed to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) as a possible model. OIRA was created by a 2012 City Council ordinance, and now staffs the Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Commission, formerly the Immigrant and Refugee Advisory Board, which was once housed in the SOCR.
Meanwhile, at the Mayor’s Office…
Dominique Stephens, special advisor on LGBTQ+ affairs in the Mayor’s Office, said declining to declare a civil emergency was about “getting to the root of the matter.” Rather, the Mayor’s Office wanted to “start to operationalize the work through the city and through various departments” to build a more long-lasting structure, Stephens said.
While the city didn’t grant the Commission’s $2.2 million request, she said the Mayor’s allocation coupled with other recent city funding will address “the meat of what [the Commission] were asking for and really dig into what we can start with.”
In August, the city put forward $550,000 in rapid relief funding: $300,000 comes from a proposal by Councilmember Rinck, which was unanimously approved by City Council, and $250,000 comes from the Mayor’s Office. The SOCR said $450,000 of the funds will go toward community-based organizations that provide essential services like healthcare, housing, employment, and community support. The remaining funds will go toward a community resource event on Nov. 7, which “will bring together more than 30 agencies offering help with housing and shelter, transportation, food, healthcare, employment, legal aid, and peer support.”
“Rapid relief” is a more streamlined approach than the traditional request for proposals (RFP) process typically used by the city, so community-based organizations can receive the funds as quickly and smoothly as possible, the SOCR said.
Additional funding came a month later, when Wilson announced her 2027 – 28 proposed budget on September 22. Wilson proposed $500,000 for a “Queer and Trans Stabilization Fund,” which “aims to support Seattle’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community, regardless of whether someone has newly arrived or has lived here their whole life,” according to the SOCR. It would “continue the work to connect community members with resources, stabilize the network of community organizations that support 2SLGBTQIA+ people, as well as other emergent needs.”
They added that the proposed ongoing funding would be distributed through a competitive procurement process with the Human Services Department.
Ford is happy to see Wilson’s proposed $500,000.
“For such a gay city, we haven’t invested in our community infrastructure the ways other major cities have, and this is a step in the right direction,” she said.
“It’s a very small fraction, but we know… that the fraction for funding trans and queer organizations is getting eaten up across the board,” Stephens said. “And so if we can do anything to start putting more into the bucket and stop taking out, we’re going to try to do that.”
The Mayor’s Office also wanted to shield those groups from federal scrutiny under Trump’s executive order, she said. The city is working with a partner organization to distribute some of the funds, creating “a little barrier,” but officials did not respond to multiple requests from CHUM News to name the partner organization.
Stephens added that the Mayor’s Office understands the “need and the want” for an OTQA, and plans to keep working with the Commission towards that goal.
LGBTQ Commissioner Ashley Ford
“The IDT was… really trying to uncover the gaps, trying to see where queer issues fit.”
What Comes Next
Ford said the conversations within the IDT were “more than we’ve really ever had at the city,” and that it helped the Mayor’s Office, SOCR, and other city departments “see the Commission’s perspective as we have been calling for an Office of Trans and Queer Affairs.”
“A big piece of the IDT was folks from various city departments just really trying to uncover the gaps, trying to see where queer issues fit within a lot of the conversation, really just getting a first-time understanding of queer issues, and where money or support from their departments could come from,” Ford said. “It was clearly the first time they were having a lot of these conversations in a coordinated way, and that is significant.”
The Commission established an ad hoc committee to focus on a long-term plan to create the OTQA.
Whatever form the city’s response takes, it will land on people like Solveig. Next month will mark her one-year anniversary in Seattle. Her experience in this city compared to Iowa has been “night and day,” she said.
“I was in culture shock when I first got here — there were flags up everywhere, which was something I’d never seen,” Solveig said. “There’s community here which is different than anywhere else. And there’s safety in numbers.”
Micah Yip is a journalist who covers politics and social issues, with work appearing in AsAmNews, the International Examiner, The Stranger and elsewhere. Find more of his work on his website.
Zorn B. Taylor is a portrait photographer based in Seattle, who specializes in documenting community. Check out Zorn’s website.