Gambit: Meet Gambit’s 40 Under 40 class of 2020

Mariah Moore, 32 and Milan Nicole Sherry, 29  

Co-directors, House of Tulip 

As the coronavirus pandemic took hold in March, Mariah Moore and Milan Nicole Sherry helped coordinate the TGNC Crisis Funding Circle, a relief fund for trans and gender non-comforming people in Louisiana. Trans activists Dylan Borne, Spirit McIntyre and Dylan Waguespack also co-managed the fund, which raised around $20,000 through GoFundMe and redistributed those donations back to local TGNC folks facing tightening expenses during the pandemic.

They found the main need was for assistance with housing, Sherry says — a reoccurring need month after month.

“We were able to provide that assistance,” she says, “but it was short-term. We wanted to think about long-term solutions and how we can actually further provide resources to our community.”

Moore and Sherry are the co-directors of House of Tulip, a community land trust project that plans to purchase property and restore a multi-unit building to create safe, welcoming homes for area TGNC people. McIntyre and Waguespack also are Tulip co-founders along with Jai Celestial, Ben Collongues, Sultana Isham, Toni Jones, Camilla Marchena, and Za’hair Martinez.

House of Tulip, a nonprofit, secured $50,000 in seed funding and launched a GoFundMe in June, which is now at more than $380,000 toward its $400,000 goal. The group original planned to buy and renovate a property on N. Claiborne Avenue, but a developer swooped in and outbid them, Moore says. They are now considering several other options around the city to provide a zero-barrier housing option for TGNC people.

Past the immediacy to provide zero-barrier homes for TGNC people — the U.S. Trans Survey estimated 1 in 3 trans people in Louisiana experience homelessness during their lives — House of Tulip wants to be a step in long-term housing goals.

Historically, home ownership has been difficult to achieve in the trans community, “even more difficult for Black trans people,” Moore says. “We’re looking at how we can break that cycle.”

Moore and Sherry both are New Orleans natives and have each been heavily involved in trans justice advocacy locally and nationally.

There is a mantra within Tulip: “Trans United Leading Intersectional Progress.”

To lead in the trans rights movement, Sherry says, requires understanding that people come from all kinds of intersecting backgrounds.

“Some of us come from sex work, some of us have experienced violence, some of us are HIV positive,” she says. “It’s not all of our stories and it’s not all of our narrative, but the reality is we are all fighting for the common goal: liberation.” — JAKE CLAPP