We deliberately wanted to wait until late February to make the exciting announcement of the new Housing Studies Association (HSA) LGBTQ+ Housing Research and Practice Network, as this marks the end of LGBT+ History Month. During LGBT+ History Month we see lots of stories being shared about LGBTQ+ people’s experiences, and rightly so, as we know in the context of housing and homelessness, LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by the many crises and left facing discrimination, family breakdowns and hate crimes to name a few. It can feel like progress is being made given the increased focus EDI has had over the last few years, and that the likelihood of people facing discrimination is lower now than it used to be. Unfortunately, the reality is very different, and there is a rise in transphobia and homophobia, both globally, but also herein the UK.
We wanted to launch this new network at the end of this month to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to support work, promote and share research and bring together people from across academia, policy and practice in a safe space to provide a platform for collaboration, sharing knowledge and thinking, to help drive forward good policy and practice and to help frame the rhetoric around the importance of equitable housing outcomes for LGBTQ+ people.
We - Jack Mason (he/him), LGBTQ+ Housing Pledge Project Co‑ordinator and Gareth Young (he/him), Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fellow for the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence – are delighted to be co-chairing this network, and we’ve put together a short introductory video to talk about our ambitions for the network, how the idea came about and to, hopefully, encourage many of you to get involved.
This network will be a safe, supportive space where people can come together to share their research findings and examples of good practice, and we aim to put on a calendar of events and activities. We would like the network agenda to be driven by the members and we will make sure we provide opportunities to talk about your ideas for ways we can encourage participation and collaboration.
We also intend to create a space where members can share early ideas of their work, and that we provide a critical friends support network for each other. And we want to create spaces to talk about the different ways in which LGBTQ+ people are marginalised and discriminated, and to explore this work through a lens of intersectionality, recognising that LGBTQ+ are not one homogenous group of people.
Our first network launch event will be held online in June, where we can introduce ourselves, talk a bit more about what we hope this network can offer and to then meet members and hear about what people would like from this network, so we can design an agenda collaboratively, and to make sure we properly consider the network guidelines so it is a genuinely safe space and accessible to anyone who would like to join us.
For more information, you can head to the HSA website, where you’ll be able to sign up to the network.
