Transgender communities struggle to rent houses and offices

Deepshikha Samiti is an organisation that has been working on the rights, education, livelihoods, and health of transgender people for 32 years. Currently located in Budh Vihar, Rohini, ours is one of the main centres for transgender counselling in Delhi.

At the centre, we do advocacy work related to the health and rights of the people of our community. In the area of health, we work with Delhi State AIDS Control Society to raise awareness on the prevention and treatment of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) through online and offline counselling.

We have always set up our centre close to areas where transgender community members reside. But it’s not easy to find and maintain an office space for long.

Generally, there is a standard room rental rate in an area. But being transgender persons, we are required to pay a higher rent. For example, while other people pay INR 15,000 for a room, we have to pay INR 20–25,000 for a similar space from which to run our centre. When we ask for the rent to be reduced, we are told to go elsewhere. But it’s the same problem everywhere, which is why we simply pay the rent demanded of us. In the past, we have been asked to relocate 10–12 times, from Mangolpuri to Sultanpuri to Budh Vihar and other neighbourhoods. This constant relocation hampers our work. In fact, we had great difficulty renting our current centre as well.

Transgender individuals also find it difficult to rent homes. Room rents that are INR 5,000 will be increased to INR 8–10,000 for us. In addition, landlords lay down strict rules such as “visitors are not allowed” or “two or more transgender persons are not allowed to share a room”. Many of us find it difficult to pay these rents and are forced to live in jhuggis or shanties.

We are harassed not only by the landlord but also by the people in the neighbourhood.

Transgender persons come to our centre regularly to seek advice, attend our health camps, and participate in social events. This upsets residents in the area. They ask, “Why are so many transgender people coming here?” People still have this perception that we either beg or engage in sex work. And when they see us taking cartons of condoms to the centre (for distribution as part of our awareness programmes on safe sex), they are worried that sex work takes place there. They call the police and pressurise the building owner to evict us. There have been times when locals have gathered to protest against us on the very first day of our moving into a new space.

Often, boys living around the centre misbehave with people from our community. When other community members retaliate, the parents of those boys blame us for disrupting the peace and ask us to leave. We have also been accused of ‘converting’ cisgender boys into transgender individuals.  

Despite the harassment we face, we believe it’s important to build good relations with the people around us. We use the principles of behaviour change communication to engage with them and help them understand that we too are part of society. We conduct outreach programmes where we invite people from the neighbourhood to our centre to learn more about our work. And once a year we host a mega community event called ‘Sakhiyon ki Maharaj’, where members of our community can meet and mingle with others.

However, we still feel that winning the trust of mainstream society is a long journey.

Kamal Sharma and Mayuri have been associated with the Deepshikha Committee for the past several years.

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Know more: Learn more about the challenges in obtaining a transgender identity certificate.