With new digs and funding, a local nonprofit is helping queer and trans residents find safety, and a path off the streets. by Anna Del Savio

In October, Portland’s first day center for unhoused queer and trans people opened in Southeast.

The Marie Equi Center’s new Brooklyn neighborhood day shelter is intended to welcome visitors “just coming in to regulate their nervous systems in the space and hang out, or to get connected to our peer services,” center director Katie Cox said.

“We say that we’re a really LGBTQ-affirming city and space, but the services and the infrastructure have needed more support,” Cox said. The new funding, which comes from Metro’s Supportive Housing Services tax revenue via Multnomah County, “feels like folks putting their money where their mouth is,” Cox added.

Peer support and community health workers are on-site to offer basic wound care, emotional support, recovery mentoring, health education, referrals, and assistance navigating social service systems. But the 13,000-square-foot Trans & Queer Service Center also has space for visitors to come in off the street to simply sit and decompress. 

For many unhoused people, “you don’t have a safe place to be during the day where you actually feel welcome and your whole nervous system has a chance to relax and just be,” Equi program director Madeline Adams said. “So much of what we do as humans to heal or to overcome what we’ve been through requires, as a baseline, an environment… where we can come back to a semblance of having all of our faculties.”

A large room at the front of the building hosts community events that run the gamut from karaoke nights to crash courses on budgeting and cleaning for newly housed folks. 

Smaller rooms are used for one-on-one meetings with community health workers who provide emotional assistance, harm reduction, basic first aid, recovery support, health education, help navigating over services and systems, and gender-affirming referrals. 

“That can look a lot of different ways, but the goal of it is to walk alongside folks, to help them address barriers as they come up and access the resources and supports that they need,” Cox said.

Before the move—which also came with a name change from Institute to Center—the Marie Equi Institute primarily offered services out of an office in the Q Center on North Mississippi Avenue.

Scarlet Meadows first came to the Q Center two years ago for the free food pantry, but found her way into the Equi Institute’s office.

The institute’s peer support workers “helped me out a lot emotionally with the stress of being a new mom as well as being part of the queer community,” Meadows said. “There were days where I went there just to be, because it was a safe space.” Meadows ended up in Portland when their housing plans fell apart en route from Kentucky. From the Equi Center mentors, Meadows found spiritual and emotional support, and help navigating bureaucracy like Medicaid enrollment. 

“Sometimes I would go there specifically to make a phone call, just to have that support and someone who knows what questions to ask,” Meadows said.

Meadows hadn’t sought out peer services before coming to the Equi Center.

“I was still dealing with a lot of trauma and kind of stuck in my own head about certain things,” Meadows said. 

Peer health workers at Equi “move at the speed of trust,” Adams said. Rather than jumping right into tasks, workers have to build relationships with their houseless clients before those clients will open up about their needs. The bigger space allows staff to connect with visitors who need more time before opening up to a peer worker. 

When Adams was houseless, one of the hardest parts was that “people just couldn’t comprehend what I was dealing with or why I wasn’t housed,” she said. “It was always just so awkward and you could tell that people didn’t want to hear. The last thing you want to do in that situation is to ask for what you need, because by the time you reach someone that’s going to say yes, you’ve already learned that it’s not really safe to be asking.”

The Marie Equi Institute was founded a decade ago, named for “Doc” Marie Equi, a lesbian doctor and activist working in Oregon in the early 1900s (and the namesake of the local lesbian bar Doc Marie’s). The institute was created to provide queer and trans-specific primary care, right after Oregon Medicaid started covering gender-affirming care. Many of the Equi Institute’s clients came to the organization after fleeing other areas of the country where there wasn’t access to gender-affirming care, Cox said.

The center has seen a growing number of visitors who came to Portland to escape anti-LGBTQ legislation and violence in other states.

When the pandemic hit, the institute had just hit pause and started to reassess operations after their clinical director took medical leave.

The institute joined the C(3)PO coalition, which created three outdoor tent camps for homeless Portlanders early in the pandemic. Starting in sheds in the C(3)PO villages, the Equi Institute built up a community health program working “at the intersection of homelessness and public health,” Cox said. 

Last fall, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners approved $3 million in funding for day shelters, including $830,000 to the Equi Institute, in preparation for Portland’s public camping ordinance taking effect. But the institute didn’t get the contract from the Joint Office of Homeless Services until March. The funds had to be spent by the end of June, leaving just a few months for the center to find a new location and use up the money. 

The institute signed a lease in June and got to work on renovations with Gensler, an architecture firm that also led the renovation of the Rose Haven day center. 

The building has showers, laundry services, a gymnasium, food pantry, kitchenette, computer lab, reading nook, and art space. 

Cox said staff are working on plans to use the gym as an overnight shelter during severe weather.

“We know this is going to be a big learning curve for us, having our own building,” Cox said.

Thanks in-part to the SHS funding, the Marie Equi Center has doubled in size to 15 staff, including a new peer services coordinator and a center operations coordinator. The center ended up spending $752,000 from JOHS last fiscal year and was awarded $857,000 for the current fiscal year.

A Homelessness Response Action Plan finalized by the city and county earlier this year specifically calls for more culturally-specific services, including the creation of a shelter for LGBTQIA2S+ adults.

Existing culturally-specific providers like the Marie Equi Center “know what their communities need, are doing what their communities need, and just need that funding piece and support from their partners in government to be able to make that happen or do more of it,” JOHS equity manager Emily Nelson said.

Cox wanted to add a housing navigator to the center’s expanded team, but the Joint Office didn’t award enough funding to cover that position in the current fiscal year. 

“As we expand day services and expand shelter, we have to make sure that we have ways to connect folks to permanent housing through day services and shelter,” Nelson said.

Cox said the center’s peer workers struggle to connect clients with housing services that are safe and affirming for queer and trans people. 

One of the hardest parts of the work “is the heartbreak of knowing exactly what people need and deserve and not being able to get that to those people in a real way,” Adams said.

Transgender houseless people are less likely to find shelter. Nearly 54 percent of transgender houseless people are unsheltered, compared to 39 percent of cisgender houseless people, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. 

The new day center won’t only serve people while they’re living on the streets or in a shelter. Trans and queer people face disproportionate discrimination in housing, both in affordable housing and market-rate rentals, so support is needed for newly housed people.

“If it’s not the rental company discriminating against you, it could be other people in the building, and then your new home is starting to feel very unsafe,” Cox said. Having a queer or trans peer who can offer support in navigating those challenges “increases the likelihood that folks are going to be able to stay housed,” they said.

“As people navigate the transition from being unhoused to being housed, they often feel like they lose their community of folks that they were living with unsheltered,” Cox said. “The more we can start to bridge those gaps early on and create that community building, the more successful we’ll be at keeping people housed.”

For more information, visit www.marieequi.center. 

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and BJC Health System have launched the joint Center for Health AI. The center will focus on making care more personalized and effective for patients and more efficient and manageable for physicians, nurses and all those striving to ensure patients receive the very best care.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and BJC Health System have launched the joint Center for Health AI. The center will focus on making care more personalized and effective for patients and more efficient and manageable for physicians, nurses and all those striving to ensure patients receive the very best care.

Donations fill up the entryway to a Goodwill Southern California Donation Center in Pasadena during the first week of 2020.; Credit: Carla Javier/KPCC

Now that the holiday season is winding down, thrift shops run by Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and other organizations are tallying up the annual flood of December donations. 

"It's always been a tradition that our donors donate between Christmas and New Year's ... and the last couple days of the year, they donate even more," Goodwill Southern California director of logistics Tinna Bauer explained. "Some do it for tax purposes, and some ... when they if they receive new items for Christmas, they clean out the old."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Atlanta auto repair shop, Express Oil, reminds customers that they provide fleet services to businesses that own and operate multiple vehicles.

Specializing in pain relief, Licensed Massage Therapist Orawan offers a variety of massage therapies, including Swedish, deep-tissue, traditional Thai, and Thai combination.

Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: University of Michigan Retirees Association (UMRA)

Terry Bertram is a U-M alum, who has been providing estate and elder law planning services in the greater Washtenaw County area for over 30 years. His talk will focus on the importance of keeping estate plans updated and the steps to assure solid planning for elder life, as well as protecting one's legacy for family members and/or designated recipients

You remember yesterday, when we wrote about Micron's new 6550 ION SSD and how it wasn't exactly the biggest SSD we'd seen? Well, that was yesterday. Today, Solidigm is announcing a new model in the D5-P5336 SSD family with a whopping 122.88 terabytes of storage in a single drive, finally topping the Nimbus Exadrive. Micron still holds the

Ensuring Digital Accessibility in K-12 Schools in a Technology-Driven Era  Center For American Progress

Shaquille O'Neal joins the First Things First crew. Shaq answers if Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic can end career as a top 5 center. "He's on that list for me."

Apple is rumored to be bringing out a new AI-powered home command center as it aims to catch up to… Continue reading Apple to enter smart home market with new AI-powered home command center, rumor says

The post Apple to enter smart home market with new AI-powered home command center, rumor says appeared first on ReadWrite.

Former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the conservative lawyer who argued the Bush 2000 recount case, has died at 84. Olson also served as private counsel to former President Ronald Reagan.

Washington Capitals center Dylan Strome needed time and three NHL teams to develop into a force. But his three seasons with the Caps so far have removed any bust labels.

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The post Dowladda Soomaaliya oo heshiis la gashay Hay’adda Global Center for Climate Mobility appeared first on Horseed Media.

One of the country’s most prominent buyers of industrial outdoor storage properties has purchased a number of distribution center sites owned and operated by a national fiber optic network company, including a site in the St. Louis region.

Center of the Storm From Lucas Films Star Wars by Raymond Swanland is a(n) Limited Edition. The Edition is Limited to Limited Edition Of 10 pcs

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Do you need to improve agent performance at your contact center? Here’s 6 ways AI tools can boost agent productivity, improving customer satisfaction in turn.

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No matter what happens this spring, the player everyone is going to be talking about on a daily basis is Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

As the Jharkhand elections unfold, voters are casting their ballots in 43 constituencies, with the remaining 40 seats set to follow in the next phase. The atmosphere in the state is charged as residents grapple with a blend of hope and

To download the entire Tyndale Bible click here. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader for this file. To read a particular book, click on the appropriate link below: -- About the Wesley Center Online -- The Wesley Center Online web site is a collection of historical and scholarly resources about the Wesleyan Tradition, theology, Christianity, and the Nazarene church. Copyright © 1993-2011. Wesley Center for Applied Theology, c/o Northwest Nazarene University. All Rights Reserved.

In A.D. 637 Jerusalem was surrendered to the Saracens. The caliph of the Saracens called Omar gave guarantees for the safety of the Christian population and because of this pledge the number of pilgrimages to Jerusalem still continued to increase. In 1065 Jerusalem was taken by the Turks, who came from the kingdom of ancient Persia. 3000 Christians were massacred and the remaining Christians were treated so badly that throughout Christendom people were stirred to fight in crusades. The Knights Templar were formed to to ensure the safety of the pilgrims of the Middle Ages who flocked towards Jerusalem. Their original name was the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ. ... the Temple of Soloman At first the Knights Templar had no church and no particular place of to live. In 1118, nineteen years after the freeing of Jerusalem, King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, granted the Knights Templar a place to live within the sacred enclosure of the Temple on Mount Moriah. This place was amid the holy structures which were exhibited by the priests of Jerusalem as the Temple of Solomon. The "Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ" became colloquially known as "the Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon" and subsequently the Knights Templars. ... They were received with great honour by Pope Honorius, who approved of the objects and designs of the holy fraternity. The Knights Templar History moved on and in 1128 the ecclesiastical Council of Troyes gave the Knights Templar official recognition and granted their rule of the order. The Council of Troyes was instigated by Bernard of Clairvaux and the Knights Templars were represented by Hugues de Payen and Andre de Montbard. The Papal approval at the Council of Troyes resulted in many new recruits joining the order - the Rules of the Knights Templar Order: In 1130, Bernard of Clairvaux drew up the rules for the new Knights Templar order. Bernard set up the order with two main classes of knighthood, the knights and sergeants or serving brethren. Sergeants or serving brothers wore a black or brown mantle to show their lower status, whilst the Knights wore a red cross granted by Pope Eugenius III. Married men who joined the order could only join as sergeants, their property coming into the possession of the Order rather than to their wives upon their death. - A Papal Bull was issued in 1139 by Pope Innocent II, a protege of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, stating that the Knights Templar should owe allegiance to no one other than the Pope himself. - The Knights Templar History saw 1146 as the year when the Knights Templar order adopted the splayed red cross as their emblem. The Battle cry of the Templars was "Beau-Séant!" which was the motto they bore on their banner. - The Knights Templar order supported the second crusade in 1148. The decision was made to attack Damascus and armies were assembled in Acre. ... The army of Jerusalem and Guy of Lusignan, the King of Jerusalem, was beaten by Turkish forces in 1184. All Knights Templar and Hospitallers who survived the battle were executed afterwards. This event prompted the Third Crusade headed by Richard the Lionheart who was supported by the Knights Templar order. The city of Acre is taken by the Crusaders in 1191. Richard the Lionheart dies in 1199 and is succeeded by his brother John. - The Knights Templar History goes on and in 1263 problems in England lead to the Baron's revolt led by Simon de Montford opposing Edward I. On the pretence of removing his mother's jewels, Edward I entered the Knights Templar Temple in London and ransacked the treasury, taking the proceeds to the Tower of London. In 1271 Edward leads another crusade and is attacked by an assassin with a poisoned knife. He survives the attack and his life was saved with drugs sent by the master of the Knights Templar, Thomas Bérard. In 1272 King Henry III of England died and the English Council met at the Temple in London and draft a letter to Prince Edward informing him of his accession to the throne, illustrating the political importance of the Knights Templar in England. - King Philip IV of France (1268-1314) who was already heavily in debt to the Knights Templar requested a further loan. The Knights Templar refused his request. King Philip IV subsequently ordered the arrest of all Knight Templars in France. The order to arrest the Templars was sent out several weeks before the date possibly giving the Templars time to hide their wealth. On 11 October, two days before the arrest of many Templar Knights, it is recorded in French Masonic history that Templar ships left La Rochelle, heading to Scotland. On Friday the 13th, in October 1307, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and 60 of his senior knights were arrested in Paris. They were charged with heresy and accused of homosexual acts. Admissions of guilt were extracted due to the use of torture. Pope Clement V initiated enquiries into the order and thousands of Knights Templar were arrested across Europe. The Medieval order of the Knights Templar become extinct in 1312 when the order is dissolved by the Council of Vienne. Anyone found sheltering a Templar was under threat of excommunication. Much of the Templar property outside of France was transferred by the Pope to the Knights Hospitallers, and many surviving Templars were also accepted into the Hospitallers. - The Death of the last Medieval Master: The Knights Templar leader Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burnt at the stake on March 18th 1314 for rescinding their former admission of heresy under torture. Jacques de Molay cursed the Pope and King Philip and prophesied that they would soon die. Pope Clement V was dead within 40 days and King Philip died that year. Jacques de Molay was the last Master of the Knights Templar.

In her book, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Dr. Crone demonstrates that Islam did not originate in Mecca. Mecca is located in the Hejaz region of what is today Saudi Arabia. It is portrayed by traditional belief as a wealthy trading center, full of merchants trading goods by caravan from Yemen in the south and Syria and the Byzantium empire in the north. Crone shows that Mecca was in fact way off the incense route from Yemen to Syria, which bypassed where Mecca is today by over 100 miles. Further, there is no mention whatever of Mecca in contemporary non-Moslem sources: ... While there may well have been a historical individual named Ubu'l Kassim who was later entitled Mohammed ("The Praised One"), who raised followers and participated in the initiation of the Arab Conquest, he likely came from northeast Arabia in what is now southern Jordan. The deity that Ubu'l Kassim chose to follow was Allah, a contraction of al-Lah, the ancient Arab God of the Moon [note: which is why the symbol of Islam to this day is the crescent moon]. Ubu'l Kassim died, however, some years before the Arab Conquest was fully underway (the traditional date is 632). Al-Rawandi summarizes what then happened:

Christian Faith Downloads -- "1st Corinthians 2:5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

As of March 1, 2023, ProScan Louisville at 4044 Dutchmans Ln, St Matthews, KY 40207 has introduced new self-pay pricing for MRIs without contrast, MRIs with contrast, and MRIs with and without contrast. Imaging fees are permanently implemented, discounted by $100 each with an additional 10% off for patients that pay in full when services are rendered.

The Mindfulness Center, formerly known as Louisville Mindfulness Center, has rebranded to envelop their recent expansion from one Kentucky location to two – one in Louisville and one in Lexington – as well as employing licensed therapists able to serve all of Kentucky, as well as those in Indiana and Florida via telehealth services.

Adelante Recovery Center announces its prestigious CARF accreditation, underscoring its commitment to exceptional standards and client-focused care in addiction treatment.

Minimum wage is a complex issue for small businesses, says the Small Business Development Center in Binghamton.

The SBDC adds that, typically, small businesses have a close relationship with their employees and if they could pay them more originally, they would.

They add that they believe some business owners may have to pick up the slack in order to keep costs low.

Published at LXer: A major new release of Mission Center, a modern system monitor app for Linux desktops, has been released. Read More......

And the real estate journey continues … Sylvia and I started Crossland Real Estate in Jan 1993, and remained independent until we sold our property management portfolio in 2004 and “retired” for a year. We didn’t actually formally retire … more of a sabbatical … as we were still in our 40s with kids 9 and 12. But we did take a year off from active real estate “production”. We weren’t sure whether we wanted to remain in real estate forever or not. I started a telecom services company and dabbled in Business Brokerage, both of which were interesting pursuits worthy of a full effort, and which I could have succeeded at doing, but after some time off from the daily real estate routine, something happened… The phone rang. It was Real Estate. It wanted us back. Sometimes distance from something brings perspective and a renewed appreciation of it. So, ... Read more

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The Idaho Women's Business Center (IWBC) marked a significant milestone for the state's business community with its inaugural Open House on Tuesday, November 5. Located at 5465 E Terra Linda Way, Room 106, in Nampa, the center welcomed over 30 attendees, including Tobin Dixon, Deputy District Director for the SBA Boise District office, and executives from Business Impact NW. Tobin Dixon states, "Today marks an [PR.com]

Centerflag Products has been around since 1999, quietly building high end air systems for the most demanding players and their markers. In 2004, owner Dennis Ashley quietly began designing a higher end version of the 400 series regulator. The result was called the 4CE.

Start your own profitable home-based Child Day Care Center with this easy-to-follow step-by-step guide.

NotePage, Inc. the publishers of the audio recording software, RecordForAll, has created an audio education center. The audio education center is designed for podcasters interested in audio recording and editing.The audio education center contains a collection of educational articles, video tutorials, and support resources for podcasters.

The Audio Education Center can be accessed at http://www.recordforall.com/audio-education-center.htm

For more information contact, NotePage, Inc. at PO Box 296, Hanover, MA 02339. Phone: 781-829-0500. Fax: 781-582-1869. E-mail: sales@recordforall.com . Internet: http://www.recordforall.com.

NotePage, Inc., creators of the popular FeedForAll RSS feed editor and the RSS2HTML script, have launched a new RSS Education Center. The RSS learning center is designed to assist new RSS users, as well as experienced users, in adopting the RSS technology in a meaningful way. The RSS Education Center includes educational articles, video tutorials, RSS tools, and support resources, all in an easy-to-navigate section of the FeedForAll website.

The RSS Education Center is designed to teach the intricacies of RSS feeds and podcasting, in simple and easy-to-understand terms. NotePage, Inc. has always been proactive about RSS education, and assembling these resources in an easy-to-use learning center made sense to further the adoption of RSS and Podcasting. The resource is freely available to all, and can be accessed at http://www.feedforall.com/rss-education-center.htm

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1. Ex-Warrior Klay Thompson awash in adoration in return to Chase Center  San Francisco Chronicle
2. Captain's hats, shimmy mark Klay's 'surreal' return  ESPN
3. ‘It was surreal’: Klay Thompson, Steph Curry reflect on epic homecoming for Warriors icon  East Bay Times
4. Emotional Klay Thompson gets cheers, heartfelt tribute in Bay Area return  NBA.com
5. Kurtenbach: ‘It’ll always be weird.’ What Klay Thompson’s return to the Bay really meant to him, the Warriors  The Mercury News

1. Apple to Launch AI-Powered Home 'Command Center' as Soon as March 2025  MacRumors
2. Apple’s Next Device Is an AI Wall Tablet for Home Control, Siri and Video Calls  Bloomberg
3. Apple is going after Google and Amazon with a new smart home competitor  Quartzy
4. Apple’s rumored six-inch ‘AI wall tablet’ could control your smart home by March 2025  The Verge
5. I effectively previewed Apple’s wall-mounted smart display in 2019, and I think it’ll be a winner  9to5Mac