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In the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the Organizacion Latina Trans en Texas (OLTT) stepped up to help those struggling in its community. Now, it needs your help to make sure it can keep doing so.
OLTT opened Casa Anandrea in May 2017 and since its launch, the shelter has housed many LGBTQI Hurricane Harvey survivors. But residents could be evicted if the organization doesn’t raise enough funds to renew its $30,000 annual lease by today, April 30. This month, Casa Anandrea’s lease payment increased $300 per month. When director Ana Andrea Molina realized that OLTT couldn’t afford the payment, she made a GoFundMe page.
“The space you know as Casa Anandrea-OLTT might have to close,” Molina wrote in the campaign description. “This place has been in operation for one year, providing housing to more than 30 people as an emergency bed and a permanent home.”
Molina, who is an undocumented trans woman from Tamaulipas, Mexico, continues to list the various things that the organization has accomplished via Casa Anandrea, including making 12 name and gender marker changes in the state of Texas, directing aid to 50 LGBTQI people who have struggled post-Hurricane Harvey, hosting leadership trainings for Trans Latinas, offering a space for program committees that have formed, and promoting trans leadership and empowerment in Houston. The shelter is funded entirely out of Molina’s own pocket and from additional donations.
“If the shelter gets shut down, our dependents will have nowhere else to go,” Molina told OutSmart. “We are the city’s only refuge specifically for undocumented trans, queer, and non-binary people. In fact, other LGBTQ shelters refer undocumented people to me when they cannot take them in.”
At press time, the page has reached a little over $3,500 out of their $30,000 goal. You can donate to the GoFundMe here.
