Losing shelter can be one of the most traumatic experiences of a person’s life. There’s no single cause behind this global crisis, but all people pushed into homelessness face the same question: Where do I go now?
In India, a coalition of grassroots organizations from across the country, including four AJWS grantees, are answering this question in a new way: To a place that recognizes my full humanity.
In 2022, this coalition, Lam-Lynti Chittaru Neralu (LCN), published a comprehensive guide to create ‘Gender Responsive Shelter Homes’ – trainings for the staff of homeless shelters to offer women, girls and LGBTQI+ people in crisis holistic services that address the emotional turmoil and social injustice they may have faced, not just a safe place to sleep.
These populations in India endure unique traumas that lead to homelessness. Countless women are forced to flee a home of violence or abuse. Many LGBTQI+ people are thrown out when their families discover they are queer. LCN’s guide trains shelter staff to create safe, nourishing environments – and its lessons have already been adopted by shelter homes around the country.
“Emergency work has to go beyond crisis intervention,” says Tashi Choedup, a co-founder of the Queer-Trans Wellness & Support Center (QT Center) in Hyderabad, India, an AJWS-supported organization that opened a shelter home in 2024. “We need mental health services, access to legal aid. People need to maintain a connection to the outside world. We wanted to help people continue to live their lives, not just survive their crisis. We’re giving space to people’s humanity.”
In the deeply traditional Hyderabad, QT Center was founded as a safe space for queer folks to connect and build community. But when Tashi and their team expanded the center into a shelter home, LCN’s ‘Gender Responsive’ guide was a bedrock in their planning.
“The work of activists is, unfortunately, often reactionary. We’re jumping from crisis to crisis, fire-fighting,” Tashi says. “To build a shelter that’s ‘responsive’ to gender means [the staff] must be aware of how gender affects our lives, and to strategize so people here feel safe – and their well-being is supported.”
For Queer-trans people in Hyderabad who’ve become homeless, especially if it’s because they’ve been outed or banished by their families, QT Center may be the first space where such individuals can feel free to express themselves.
Tashi understands the importance of self-expression intimately. They grew up sensing they didn’t fit within India’s rigid gender norms, and came out to their family as a queer-trans person – eventually entering Buddhist monastic life before returning to activism.
“For so many queer people, before we know we are different, the world treats us as if we are different – and won’t let us forget it. We struggle, and we make peace with that struggle,” says Tashi. “For me, being different was never an internal problem, but an external one. The world had a problem with who I am, not me.”
Today, Tashi passes that resilience to the community that’s formed within QT Center, including folks relying on the Center’s 10 shelter beds.
Across the country in New Delhi, AJWS partner organization Shakti Shalini supports women survivors of gender-based violence with counseling, crisis intervention, job skills training, legal aid, childcare and a shelter home that can house 10 adults and their children. Shakti Shalini works with other organizations around India to facilitate rescue operations; women welcomed in their shelter include refugees and human trafficking survivors, as well as New Delhi locals.
“We’re working with people, each with different needs; it’s an in-depth, individualized, complex process,” says Tamanna Basu, Shakti Shalini’s core lead. “And their recovery time can’t be limited. Some women need a month, some need a year.”
For Shakti Shalini, ‘Gender Responsive’ means bucking the norms of many shelters in India, “run in this patriarchal, custodial, paternalistic and patronizing way, where women are not being treated as if they have any agency,” says Tamanna. Women seeking shelter at Shakti Shalini’s facility regain control over their lives, no matter how long it takes.
LCN’s ‘Gender Responsive Shelter Homes’ guide “is addressing a huge need. These are important trainings,” she says. “Patriarchal shelters don’t emerge from nowhere; they come from the mindset of this whole country. We must break these norms and notions. And the Gender Responsive guide gives the tools to go in that direction.”