Building Homes and Community at My Sistah’s House
by Briar Brakhage
When My Sistah’s House was founded in 2016, co-founder Kayla Gore already had years of experience volunteering and advocating for the transgender women of color in Memphis. Through her work with organizations like Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, Transgender Law Center, and OUTMemphis, she sought to alleviate barriers to emergency housing, inspired in part by her firsthand experience of homelessness.
After some time living in a city park, Kayla entered a transitional housing program, which provides temporary housing after crises like homelessness or domestic violence for periods ranging from two weeks to two years. She says the transitional housing elevated her out of her situation toward the work she does today. From the inside, she saw the holes, barriers, and blind spots of the system. While working with the Transgender Law Center, she watched the helpline get “bombarded with people having issues with their landlords and issues with housing discrimination,” knowing well that there was little emergency housing available. Propelled to action by the needs of her community, together with co-founder Ellyahnna C. Wattshal, Kayla opened My Sistah’s House, buying and converting a house into an eight-bed housing facility, run by and for transgender women of color.
But a lot of people endure hardships without dedicating their lives to protecting others from that hardship. Few are so dedicated that they would open their own homes to the extent that Kayla has, let alone invest their time, money, and energy. What ignites Kayla’s work to house her community?
“I think it’s just ‘cause I’m from Memphis. It’s just a Memphis thing,” she says. A current project of My Sistah’s House is building twenty tiny homes on a plot of land in South Memphis—on the same street where Kayla grew up. When Kayla was a kid in that neighborhood, her relationship with her neighbors was different from what many experience now: “They knew whose child I was, they knew what house I was supposed to be going to. And if I went to the wrong house or the wrong park, people knew what was going on.” She wants that kind of community back.
In the Tiny Home Project, which has broken ground on the eleventh of twenty planned tiny homes to be transitional and permanent homes for trans and nonbinary people of color, at the center of the land is a community green space with grills and a large mural. Though this space is part of My Sistah’s House, Kayla says it is for the community as a whole, saying, “It’s not designated for trans people or LGBT people—it’s designated for people.”
Every Friday, in an initiative supported by the city of Memphis, My Sistah’s House provides hot meals from their community grill to not just the residents of the tiny homes but also the general community. Partnering with different agencies like the Shelby County Health Department to provide additional services like immunizations, My Sistah’s House shares these resources with anyone who walks up.
To Kayla, these community efforts are what home really means, saying, “I think when I think about home, it’s not just the inside of the four walls. You know—that’s the house. The home is a bigger, larger community. That’s what it was for me when I grew up over there.”
So how are communities built, repaired, and sustained? For Kayla and My Sistah’s House, it starts with a sense of ownership. One of Kayla’s guiding principles is called Meaningful Involvement of People Affected, or MIPA. Following this principle, My Sistah’s House and the Tiny Home Project are community-driven projects, with community members invited to meetings of all kinds and encouraged to share their opinions. The community–from the marginalized people in need of homes to existing neighbors, schools, and churches in the area–is invited to contribute to the creation and tending of this space. “We’re doing things with the community, not just in mind, but involved,” says Kayla. All the way from meetings with architects to choosing furnishings and appliances, the affected parties are involved. The choice to provide furnishing stipends at move-in rather than pre-chosen items allows the people moving into the housing the opportunity to create their own spaces, with whatever preferences or accommodations they choose. Kayla has watched choices like this empower people with a sense of ownership and pride in their homes and community.
My Sistah’s House is invigorating a multi-faceted community with a core principle of mutual aid. My Sistah’s House is not a charity organization. The work is collaborative and cooperative, not directed by a singular funder or a small and distant board of directors. Kayla has found, as she has worked to build this community, that many people who live in My Sistah’s House or the Tiny Home Project respond earnestly to the opportunity to help others. She has found that gathering aid for someone in need has come organically without any need to push people to give to the community that cared for them.
My Sistah’s House originated to provide housing for transgender women of color, and while that initiative is still their driving priority, their work has lasting benefits for many more people—and those long-term and widespread benefits are just as important as the present to Kayla. “We’re making sure that we’re incorporating ADA-accessible housing within our tiny houses that we’re building because we’re not just thinking about My Sistah’s House and the Tiny House Project. We may not survive 20 years or 30 years—or might not be needed in 20 or 30 years–but these houses, the structures that we’re building, will last at least 50 years, even to 100 years, depending on how they’re maintained.” The lasting effects of this organization and project are understood by Kayla, and her dedication to including the community at large in the creation and benefits of these programs builds the kind of connections and neighborliness she remembers from her childhood.
With programs like the community meals, the neighborhood is transforming. “They come out. They see what we’re doing. Their kids get to get food, they get to get resources, and then we’re just building more and more community. I noticed that relationships are happening with the neighbors—and not just the tiny house neighbors, but the neighbors who were there before us.”
Through intentional mutual aid and the active inclusion of all affected people, the walls of what many people think of when they imagine “home” come down, and it is proven that home is much larger than brick and mortar. My Sistah’s House and the Tiny Homes Project are more than a shelter and housing—they’re a home. Home is community. Home is knowing your neighbor, sharing meals and resources, coming to each other’s aid when needed. Home is shared responsibility. Home is the village that raises the child (and finds the lost cat, helps change the flat tire, and visits the elder). Home is the people of your block, your neighborhood, your city—it’s a Memphis thing.
It takes more than building houses to build homes. To contribute to the community work being done by My Sistah’s House, visit mshmemphis.org to sign up to volunteer. Volunteer opportunities are varied and plentiful, doing anything from landscaping and street clean-up to checking on elderly residents to ensure their houses are prepared for the winter. There are also opportunities to join program and event planning committees. And they’re always looking for someone who knows how to grill!
If you or someone you know needs a safe space, emergency shelter, or access to health and social services, visit mshmemphis.org to fill out an application.
all photos courtesy of My Sistah’s House
