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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or two-spirit — known as LGBTQ2S — people, and particularly youth, are greatly overrepresented among the homeless of North American cities. Canadian researchers estimate that while between five and 10 per cent of the general population identifies as LGBTQ2S, between 25 and 40 per cent of homeless youth identify as such.

Within that group, transgender people are particularly vulnerable. It’s estimated between 0.5 and one per cent of the population identifies as trans, but Vancouver’s homeless survey last year found five per cent of the city’s homeless people identified as trans.

Tamara Loyer, who runs a drop-in centre for trans women at the Atira Women’s Resource Society in the Downtown Eastside, said no one she knows had heard about the city’s plan for Ross House, and it’s a welcome surprise.

The stakes are high.

Loyer said most of the two dozen trans women she knew when she worked in the sex trade in the mid-1980s and during her years living on the street until 2010 have either died or disappeared.

“They died on the street or they overdosed in alleys or in jail,” she said. “All of them had been beaten up, all of them had been raped, all of them were denied housing. Not a single one of us hasn’t gone through that. And they’re gone.”

The kind of housing planned for Ross House could help save lives, she said.

But, she added a big caveat: “They have to make sure they get proper management… There’s got to be services around Ross House, otherwise it will just turn into another slum hotel.”