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.

For the past seven years the TRANS Project, which operates on an annual budget of $400,000, has had three full-time and four part-time staff, most of whom are transgender. It has been a welcome resource for a community that often experiences discrimination, clients said. With a safe space for transgender and gender variant individuals to receive health care services as well as employment and housing opportunities, the program is unique. 

But on July 1, the three major grants that fund the programs – including those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Drug Abuse – will end, according to Susan Kegeles, co-director of CAPS.

"That's a very difficult situation," said Kegeles. "When a grant ends you're stuck with no way of supporting it."

Jazzie Collins, a transgender black woman who is a client of the TRANS Project refuses to see the programs disappear.

"I feel horrible that it's closing," said Collins. "This is a resource that is needed for the trans community and it would be devastating if we would lose our resource center due to future lack of funding."

Collins learned about the projects' closing two weeks ago and immediately started to take action. She approached Chris Daley, director of the Transgender Law Center, and began lobbying Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and Supervisors Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty to see if the programs could be saved.

"It's huge blow for the community," said Daley about the pending closure of the Transitions and TRANS programs.

Daley noted, "Right now we're just trying to keep a tab on things and see how things are going. [We are] providing advice [about] just how to put a good package together for the city to understand what the services are."

"I'm committed to making sure the program survives," said Peskin. "It's the only one of its kind."

Daly told the Bay Area Reporter that he was working with Collins, "I am interested in the future of the project."

Dufty was unavailable for comment by press time.

Peskin began conversations with UCSF this week.

Kegeles, who has experience transferring research projects with community-based aspects over to local health and human services departments or community organizations, told the B.A.R. that she wasn't sure why this didn't happen with these projects, but she is interested in seeing them continue.

"I'm not really sure why it wasn't," said Kegeles. "Usually when you transition it to the community [you] work with the health department and try to get the health department to take on the project. That's what should have happened here. Those discussions should be happening about taking it over."

She added, "I would be very happy to help out to transfer the project to the city. I would be very happy to talk to people and problem solve."