Imani Henry, 46, is a community organizer in Brooklyn and identifies himself as a "trans man.'' For the transgender population, he says, the search for housing is laden with discrimination. Yana Paskova for Al Jazeera America

For as long as Paola Ramirez has journeyed through her gender identity, she has been haunted by housing insecurity — first as a pained young boy living with her parents in Guatemala, then on her own as a gay man and, finally, as a transgender woman in New York.

So she was understandably nervous this summer when the lease for her studio apartment in Queens went up for renewal under a new owner.

When Ramirez was growing up, her papa would chastise her, then his only son, for not having machismo like him and for playing with dolls. At 21, jobless and cashless, she bolted first to Boston, then to New York, for a semblance of acceptance.

Her first landlord, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, went out of his way to make her uneasy and to deny her assertions of femininity, she said. Eyeing her longer hair and face made up with cosmetics, he constantly yelled at her from his first-floor apartment, using slurs like “faggot” or “gay boy.” After a few months, she moved.

Now, she said, her current landlord told her she couldn’t renew her lease unless she presented ID — such as a driver’s license or passport — that stated her female name and listed her gender as female.

“I feel pressure,” said Ramirez, 41, who works as a hairstylist. She wonders if such demands are even legal.

Getting the documentation that the landlord demanded isn’t easy. In some states, it requires medical intervention, such as surgery, according to Alison Gill, the senior legislative counsel at the Human Rights Campaign. Then there are states that require transgender people to submit a form signed by a medical professional that their gender identity is male or female to obtain a driver’s license.

But according to several housing advocates, the requirements placed on Ramirez by her landlord are unlawful.

“This is absolutely illegal,” said Eugene Chen, a staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group. “This highlights the sort of discrimination people who are transgender face. These things happen to transgender people every day, on every level.”