Queer and trans people have been showing up with nothing in California cities for decades, ever since the Navy dropped sailors for homosexual conduct with “blue” discharges in San Francisco after World War II. We arrived in such great numbers and organized so persistently that we’ve got the strongest laws in the country: job protections, surgery for trans inmates, nonbinary gender markers on driver’s licenses. Those laws, which are real and hard-won, draw LGBTQ+ people to California like siren songs. But do good laws matter if you have nowhere to sleep?

Gavin Newsom kicked off his first online ad campaign for California governor with a treacly video about the same-sex marriages he performed as San Francisco mayor in 2004, aimed squarely at nice liberals. He’s courageously pro-LGBTQ+, the video tells voters. It’s working — he’s enjoyed a wide lead since winning the June primary.

But California has the country’s highest poverty rate, almost entirely because of the housing crisis, as trans Californians like Gregory know well. In Los Angeles County alone, about 600,000 people spend 90 percent of their income on rent, leaving virtually nothing left over for food and transportation. The state lacks a million apartments for very-low-income people, and though the state set aside almost $5 billion this year for affordable housing and homelessness, rent prices continue to soar. Years into the housing crisis, the state legislature couldn’t pass a high-density housing bill this spring, and homeowners “uncomfortable” around poor people have stymied local affordable housing efforts. On the rental front, Newsom is virtually indistinguishable from his Republican opponent.

Newsom argues his plan to create more housing will reduce rent, which is unlikely in Gregory’s San Jose, where developers told the city council in April that already-sky-high rent would have to be 25 percent higher on any new housing they build. None of the 58 counties in the state has enough affordable housing to meet demand, but during primary season, Newsom argued he’d build more housing than had ever been built in a year for seven straight years, a goal so lofty experts called it impossible.

Newsom claimed to reduce San Francisco’s street homelessness by 12,000 people, but 5,000 of the city’s homeless simply got bus tickets to leave, and the crisis worsened after he left office to become lieutenant governor. In 2010, he spearheaded San Francisco’s sit-lie ordinance, which made it a crime to take up space on a sidewalk, to vigorous opposition from homeless advocates. Neither does he support this year’s ballot initiative to restore cities’ ability to allow rent control, likely because real estate billionaires like George and Judith Marcus, who oppose the measure, are among the top contributors to his campaign, along with the powerful landlords of the California Apartment Association.

Newsom’s California sounds dreamy for LGBTQ+ people — if you’ve got money. But without a well-paying job, affording rent in coastal cities is almost impossible, especially for trans people facing stigma from landlords, who hold all the power in California’s housing market. And when straight politicians tweet photos from Pride festivities but oppose efforts to shift power away from landlords, vulnerable queer and trans renters face the consequences.

“A ton of landlords will not rent to someone, even if they have the income, even if they could show proof of employment. They have the ability to just say 'no,'” says Lisa Willmes, program director at Recovery Café San Jose, a trans-friendly center for people dealing with addiction, mental health issues, and homelessness in downtown San Jose. California has prohibited housing discrimination against trans people since 2004, but in practice it’s difficult to enforce. “There’s no way to prove that you were discriminated against because you’re trans,” Willmes says.