eBar.com – by Heather Cassell
The University of California at San Francisco’s Transitions and Transgender Resource and Neighborhood Space projects are scheduled to close July 1 because grants that fund the programs are ending.
The only projects of their kind in the Bay Area, the closures will leave an estimated 1,300 transgender and gender variant people who have used the services during the past four years without anywhere to go.
The Transitions Project, housed under the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UCSF, has an annual budget of $450,000 and opened in 2005 to provide healthcare research about HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and general access to cultural sensitivity training for health care professionals, according to Joanne Keatley, who co-founded the project but left in November 2005 for another position at the university.
The TRANS Project, which began in 2001, consists of community-based healthcare services run by a transgender staff. It provides services such as basic hygiene, substance abuse, counseling, socializing and networking, and employment services and opportunities to the transgender community.