HUD acknowledges biology in homeless shelter regulations

The Bay Area Rescue Mission doesn’t let men who identify as women into the same shelter buildings where it houses women and children. And Bram Begonia, CEO of the San Francisco–area rescue mission, says there are two reasons for that.

First, safety. “The No. 1 reason why we don’t mix is that we’re maintaining safe spaces for vulnerable women in a trauma-informed care environment,” Begonia explained. “If you came to me right now and said … ‘Why can’t I have this dorm? I’m presenting as [transgender], and I want to be there.’ I’d say, ‘It’s not about you,’ right? We want to serve you. We want to help you. But we have vulnerable women that are here.”

Second, the mission wants to stay true to its Christian beliefs. The organization believes that the biblical understanding of sex and gender that it teaches helps free the people it serves. Begonia explained that the mission can’t preach something but then practice the opposite in how it houses people.

Later this month, the public comment period will close on a policy proposal from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The policy would keep men who identify as women out of “women-only” homeless shelter facilities that receive federal funding. While the proposed rule has faced significant criticism from public comments, experts say the policy will provide much-needed safety and security to vulnerable women and ease a burden on homeless shelters’ leaders.

Mikayla Culbertson, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told WORLD on Monday that the proposal replaces the terms “gender” and “gender identity” with “sex” on dozens of HUD regulations. The Federal Register notice on the proposed policy explained that the change came in response to President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” Since February 2025, HUD has not been enforcing rules that previously allowed men who identified as women to access women-only facilities.

For religious organizations trying to help the homeless, the new policy will provide relief, Culbertson explained. “It means that they can continue serving their communities while protecting women’s safety without the fear of unfair government overreach for their religious beliefs,” she said.

In August 2018, ADF sued the city of Anchorage, Alaska, for what it described as harassment of the Downtown Hope Center, a religious organization that helps homeless women. The city had opened an investigation into the center for allegedly refusing earlier that year to serve a man who claimed to be a woman.

The Downtown Hope Center and ADF both maintained that the organization did nothing wrong—and both organizations insisted that it didn’t turn the individual in question away because of how he identified. Rather, the shelter turned him away because he arrived inebriated and after check-in time.

But the city still investigated the Downtown Hope Center and pressured the shelter to change its policies about who it let into its facilities and where it let them stay. A year later, a federal judge ruled against Anchorage. The city then reached an out-of-court settlement with the shelter, later approved by the court, that allowed the Downtown Hope Center to keep its policies protecting its women-only shelters from males moving in.

The Downtown Hope Center applauds HUD’s newly proposed policy. “We are pleased that this proposal recognizes the biological distinction between male and female—no ministry should ever be targeted by the government for its religious beliefs,” said Sherrie Laurie, the center’s CEO, in a statement that ADF provided to WORLD. “This rule helps protect the vulnerable women we serve, many of whom are survivors of rape, sex trafficking, and domestic violence, by ensuring they are not forced to share private sleeping and bathing spaces with biological males.”

But some advocacy groups have criticized HUD’s proposed regulations. The National Low Income Housing Coalition said the move was “counterproductive and unnecessarily cruel.” The pro-LGBTQ organization Advocates for Trans Equality urged its supporters to file public comments expressing disapproval for HUD’s proposal.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness also slammed the proposal. It said that using the previous terms “gender” and “gender identity” in HUD policy ensured that people who sought help at homeless shelter facilities didn’t have to prove their biological sex in ways that would make them feel unsafe, demeaned, or threatened.

But Begonia explained that, at the Bay Area Rescue Mission, staff members don’t force anyone to undergo a physical examination. They simply ask everyone who shows up what sex they were assigned at birth. If someone lies about their sex, staff or other people at the shelter will eventually find out—whether it’s during showers or at some other time. At that point, the mission moves the person to the housing that corresponds with their sex.

“And that’s happened, you know?” he told WORLD. “People have been miscategorized or miscategorized themselves, and it’s no different than applying for a job and saying, ‘I had a degree in philosophy,’ and you find out they didn’t graduate from high school.”

HUD’s proposal could affect a disproportionate number of people who identify as transgender. The National Alliance to End Homelessness points to numbers showing that individuals who identify as members of the opposite sex are eight times as likely as members of the general population to become homeless at some point in their lives. And roughly 1 in 14 respondents to the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey had experienced homelessness at some point in the previous year, the group said.

But Mikayla Culbertson explained that HUD’s policy doesn’t prevent transgender people from receiving assistance from homeless shelters. All it does is protect women and children, she said.

Culbertson pointed to the Downtown Hope Center’s mission to help any clients by supplying meals, clothing, showers, and other resources. “This proposed rule doesn’t prohibit individuals who identify as transgender from accessing those resources,” she said. “Instead, it protects vulnerable women by not forcing them to share intimate spaces with men.”

Begonia explained that even if homeless shelter workers disagree with keeping biological men out of areas reserved for biological women, the rule would still take a load off their backs.

“I believe this will help, whether they say it or not,” Begonia said. “When they’re introducing someone in their population to women who have experienced significant trauma, that is definitely triggering, and it’s high stress on the staff. … They have to have more staff to make sure that the individual is safe, as well as those women and children are safe.”