GAL: Home is a place where you can find safety and shelter.
Kayla knows too well what it's like to feel unsafe.
As a Black trans woman she has grown up in a world that cast
her out for simply being who she is.
But she's determined to leave her truth with dignity and
impact others like her by creating the safety and
shelter of the home that every one of us deserves.
This is Kayla's Impact.
KAYLA: Home is a place where you can go and you can
sleep safely and shelter.
ALEXIS: Home is like a sanctuary wherever I lay my
head I try to make it my sanctuary and my peace.
MAN: You can be at home anywhere,
as long as you are in a place where your heart is whole and
you feel like you are where you need to be.
WOMAN: A lotta people in the trans community,
they're still looking for a place to call their own and
once they do find that home it becomes something very
important to them.
KAYLA (off-screen): We gotta get our survival kits.
We're doin' about 25 to 30 this week.
We wanna make sure that we are putting all of our PPE
supplies in, that's our mask, that's our hand sanitizer and
we definitely wanna make sure that we're putting in our
gloves, our hats and our warming blankets.
ALEXIS: We put pepper spray and mace.
KAYLA: We have alarm kits.
ALEXIS: We have alarm kits. We have stun guns.
Pretty much everything that you need to protect yourself.
KAYLA: Except for a gun.
ALEXIS: Except for a gun.
(laughs).
KAYLA: These kits are for trans women, transfemmes,
trans masculine folks as well as non-binary people.
And we make our kits depending upon what type of items
we get donated to us.
Growin' up here in Memphis I was a very quiet, shy child.
Kinda stayed to myself.
And I think I was so reserved then because I knew I wasn't
showin' up whole.
Back then I didn't have the language to say I was transgender,
but I knew I was different and I knew that
the body that I saw in the bathroom every morning,
was not the body that I was destined to be.
I feel like a lot of my femininity I suppressed it,
because I started noticing the negative reactions I would get
from people who were not my family.
I started transitioning about maybe ten years ago.
I made a firm decision that I wanted to change the outside
to match what was on the inside.
No-one knew in my family that I was transitioning until
maybe a year into my transition and I told my mom
by sending her a picture of me when I felt like I had
achieved a few goals in my transition.
Having a gay child's one thing,
but then you have a child who's actually changing their gender,
defying what society says, you know,
gender constraints should be, it's a bigger pill to swallow.
Anybody up for wanting food? Y'all good?
You'd like a survival kit?
ALEXIS: I've been one of those girls that didn't feel like
I fitted in or I didn't belong anywhere.
KAYLA: Would you like a bag of food?
ALEXIS: Being trans is a race within its own.
So imagine being African American and trans on top of that.
So it's like I'm battling two things.
I have to be this type of way and this type of way.
I have to fight for being an African American and I have to
fight for being a transgender woman in America.
So I have literally all the odds against me.
In the south in general people like me aren't accepted,
and a lot of girls like me don't make it to the age of 35
and I will be 34 this year.
So that's a blessing within itself because I've seen so
many girls die age 25, 26, 22,
over people just not accepting them for being who they are.
KAYLA: Now you be safe, okay?
ALEXIS: You have a good one, be safe.
KAYLA (off-screen): About ten years ago I ended up being
homeless for a short time.
I was stabbed five times, both my hands were slit wide open
with a butcher knife.
And I remember one night and I was like,
my mom can't find me.
I don't want her to have to identify me in an alley or a
cheap motel room.
Trans people here in the south rarely report violence that
doesn't result in death.
My life experiences make me want to make sure that
trans women don't have to endure what I endured.
I knew that I couldn't just not do anything in
my hometown about homelessness.
There's no security and safety for trans folks in shelters.
Transfemmes would have to conform and sleep in
male quarters and vice versa.
There's always a heightened sense of violence that can
happen to you, so most trans people choose not to use the
services of shelters here in Memphis.
ANGELICA: I lived in a home like this on and off for a
whole four, five years I was homeless.
Some landlords, they'd turn me around and say we don't allow you,
we don't allow people like you here.
Sometimes I had to sleep in abandoned houses like these
because that's the only way I knew how to survive.
I felt like I ain't got nowhere else to go.
KAYLA: We were trying to figure out what's a permanent
solution to this housing problem and what we realized
is that in our journey, through My Sistah's House,
was when we became homeowners we had a lot more autonomy
over how we govern our space.
So we wanted to pass that blessing onto the individuals
in our membership which is home ownership in the form of
a tiny house.
So I am here at our first site.
I just wanted to come by.
Put some shades on. There we go.
Okay, so we are here, I'll turn this camera around.
And here is our two tiny homes,
our first two tiny homes, I'm gonna walk on in.
'Cause you can get an idea of what it's gonna look like.
And I also wanna show y'all the neighborhood,
just to show y'all.
There are very few houses over here and we're in hopes of
acquiring all of these lots that are adjacent to our
tiny homes to revitalize it,
provide free and affordable housing,
specifically to the TGNC community here in Memphis, Tennessee,
because we deserve it.
We deserve it.
So today we came out to clear up some of the debris so we
can go ahead and get the land prepared for us to
start construction over here.
We have some staff, some volunteers and some members of
My Sistah's House here today.
This particular lot there hasn't been a house here in
over 12 years.
The house that was here burned down,
no-one wanted to rebuild and people just come here,
dump tires and like a lot of the stuff that we've seen today.
It has been a lotta work and we've had to raise a lot of money.
But I have a community that is really,
really counting on me to make this happen and I'm still
amazed that we were able to come up with this idea,
and we were able to execute it the way we've been
able to execute it.
We wanna be able to help people plan ahead.
These homes will allow people to plan for five years and
plan for ten years, people can go back to school,
people can actually live a full life thriving,
versus only being able to plan for a week or a month in advance.
MAN: Okay, watch your step, it's still under construction.
KAYLA: This looks amazing.
ANGELICA: Oh wow. KAYLA: Okay, I'm excited.
ANGELICA: This gonna be my living room or my bedroom?
KAYLA: Both.
It's gonna be set up like a studio so your bed is gonna be
here and it's gonna convert into your living room when you
need like a space for you wanna invite people over to entertain.
That's what you're gonna do there and then when you wanna
go to sleep you let your bed down.
ANGELICA: Mm. KAYLA: You let your hair down.
ANGELICA: Yeah. KAYLA: Get you some rest.
MAN: So you got your fridge right here,
your drawer space, your sink and dishwasher and so forth.
ANGELICA: This is the first time I've ever really had my own.
MAN: Oh really? ANGELICA: Mm-hm.
MAN: This is a long way from being homeless, ain't it.
ANGELICA: This is a long way from being homeless and
being on the streets.
It feels good that I was like chosen to be the first one to
have one and, hm, yesterday
I was thinking like god, wow,
this is the first time I'm ready to have my own home
and I almost burst into tears yesterday.
KAYLA: Yeah, ditto.
(laughs).
ANGELICA: Yeah, I almost burst into tears yesterday.
KAYLA: Ditto.
ANGELICA: Me doesn't think about wow,
so I don't have to worry about being kicked out from
my daddy's home.
I don't have to worry about sleeping on somebody else's
couch or I have to go through the problems where people
didn't want me being around 'em 'cause I'm different than them.
KAYLA: If there was one thing that I would like people to
know about trans folks, is that we're human.
That we have feelings.
And that we're worthy.
Like everything they were asking for or everything that
we're entitled to, we're worthy of it.
We are sitting here in a house that's completely built.
Somebody has to inhabit it.
And I think it's...
I think it should be you.
ALEXIS: What?
KAYLA: I think this should be your house.
ALEXIS: Oh.
KAYLA: You didn't know you was gonna get a house today did you?
ALEXIS: I didn't think, I didn't even put it in
retrospective or just, I, Girl, you know,
I didn't think nothin' about it.
KAYLA: You have shown a lotta courage,
you help a lotta people, you nurture people and I think
it's time for people to start nurturing you.
And the community has nurtured MSH to be able to
provide this house to you if you'll accept it.
Can I have a hug?
(sobs).
KAYLA (off-screen): Now that I'm able to like express myself and
my gender expression is hourly everywhere and you can't hide
my transness, I feel like I'm a whole new person and
I'm able to like do things like the tiny house project and
be on a national level where I'm just all out there,
there's no secrets.
You can show up how you wanna show up and people are gonna
perceive you to be whatever they want to perceive you to
be, just be true to yourself.
♪ ♪
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.