Transgender people experiencing homelessness in multiple San Joaquin Valley cities are traveling to Modesto for emergency housing because, according to one advocate, providers there are better prepared to accommodate them than shelters in places such as Merced.
In the last five years, Katalina Zambrano, the executive director at CalPride Valle Central, an LGBTQ+ resource center in downtown Merced, has referred five unhoused clients to the Berberian Shelter in Stanislaus County.
“I hate to say it, but…as soon as we have a trans individual, we ship them up over there,” Zambrano said.
Berberian Shelter Operations Manager Misty Jones confirmed Zambrano has called on behalf of two clients experiencing homelessness this year.
While Merced’s D Street Shelter is closer to CalPride’s site, Zambrano said driving 38 miles out of the county has been the fastest way to place an unhoused trans client into immediate shelter for the night.
In Merced, when a trans individual in crisis loses their home and needs emergency shelter, they can encounter a long and complicated intake process, Zambrano said. It’s taken up to five days for her to connect with someone in the county who can help, she said.
“…If you have a trans individual who was just kicked out of their home or…(is) living on the streets…and needing that emergency housing that day,…Where am I to house them?” Zambrano said.
She’s picked up trans adults experiencing homelessness in Fresno, Lodi, Mariposa and Merced, driven them to the Berberian Shelter and stayed with them through the intake process there.
One time, she picked up a trans individual who needed to leave an unsafe sleeping arrangement at a motel in Mariposa.
“I drove up to Mariposa, and I’m freaking out because here I’ve never driven in snow in my life,” Zambrano said. “All I have is a (phone) number and an address.
“I was trying very hard to get them housed here in Merced,” she added. “There were no callbacks. There was no space. So my second call was to get them housed at the Berberian Shelter.”
People who are gender diverse are eight times more likely than the general population to experience homelessness, according to data by Advocates for Trans Equality and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
The study highlights previously unreleased data from the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, the largest survey of trangender people in the country. It recorded the interviews of 92,000 gender-diverse individuals.
Why the Berberian Shelter in Modesto?
Modesto’s Berberian Shelter, with 202 beds, is a titan compared to Merced’s D Street Shelter with 50 beds or the Merced County Navigation Center with 76 beds.
Two shelters are situated inside a towering khaki-colored building, the original Haig and Isabel Berberian Shelter and Transitional Living Center, which opened in 2005, and the Access Center Emergency Shelter, or ACES shelter, which opened in 2018.
Staff refer to the building itself as a campus, and locals generally call it the Berberian Shelter, Stratton said.
The Modesto shelter provides the fastest way for unsheltered trans adults in some San Joaquin Valley counties and cities to access emergency housing, according to Zambrano.
“We try to treat people with respect and understanding,” The Salvation Army Maj. Darren Stratton said. The faith-based organization manages the shelter.
Individuals arriving at the shelter’s doorstep, he said, are seeking one primary need – a place to sleep.
“At the end of the day they’re finding themselves in a very vulnerable position, and lives are usually in some sort of unmanageable situation by the time they arrive at our doorstep,” he said. “So when they’re here, the last thing we want to do is make a situation worse.”
The shelter’s bunk-bed design allows staff to accommodate more people. It’s a low-barrier shelter which accepts partners, pets and possessions.
Entry depends on available bed space, and second, whether an individual can climb a top bunk. Bottom bunks, Stratton said, are reserved for people who need them.
“As a faith-based organization, that is central to what we believe, and what we attempt to teach, which is to…love people and treat them with dignity, with respect, and offer hope in an environment that is going to be safe for men, women and people to participate fully in our programs,” Stratton said.
Shelter operations in Merced
Emergency shelters are one of six types of housing projects listed on Merced CoC’s website – alongside transitional housing, rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, supportive services only and homeless prevention.
The goal of shelters is to provide individuals in crisis with a safe environment for rest.
John Ceccoli, the director of the Merced County Human Services Agency who handles county contracts for homeless services, said he wanted to know more about what obstacles Zambrano is finding when trying to place unhoused trans clients at county shelters. His interview with The Merced FOCUS was the first time he learned that Zambrano took transgender clients to the Modesto shelter.
Ceccoli said he wants to work with CalPride to bridge the gap in services.
“Our intent is absolutely to reach out to CalPride…gain a better understanding and quite, honestly, just how we can be more effective here locally,” Ceccoli said. “That would be the goal of that conversation.”
Operating a shelter requires constant assessment of risk and probability, Ceccoli said. “It’s just part of the business.”
Individuals who need emergency shelter in the county are coming in with high-level needs such as severe mental health and substance use disorders.
“Safety is an everyday thought,” Ceccoli said about Merced County’s shelter operations.
Individuals in public and privately-funded shelters are generally required to follow rules and policies to protect other tenants.
“We want to improve your health and safety, ” Ceccoli said. “There’s not much dignity in living in a public space when you don’t have access to bathrooms, running water, hot water, all of these things, right? You’re in survival mode.”
Bruce Metcalf, the executive director of the Merced Rescue Mission, which manages the Merced County Navigation Center, said shelter is not guaranteed. The demand for emergency housing in the county is simply greater than the supply, and beds fill quickly.
That might be one of the reasons someone, regardless of gender, might not secure a bed at the Navigation Center, he said.
An average length of stay at county shelters is more than six months, or about 200 days, Ceccoli said.
Of the 748 people experiencing homelessness in Merced County, 403 were sheltered, according to the 2026 PIT Count report.
One non-binary person experiencing homelessness was counted as sheltered this year.
“Saying there’s very few trans individuals still does not make it OK for the county housing individuals to not take into consideration making proper accommodations for them,” Zambrano said.
Accommodations are any adjustments at shelters that increase the safety of transgender individuals, she said. Examples include displaying Pride flags to promote inclusive environments or implementing policies to protect trans individuals.
Zambrano said the most important accommodation would be clear policies targeting hate speech and other types of gender-based discrimination.
Without accommodations, trans people experiencing homelessness may refuse shelter altogether, opting instead to sleep in the street, where they risk increased harm, she said.
“We understand that trans individuals are at a higher rate of being sexually assaulted, being harassed and harmed on the streets,” she said. “They’re just walking targets.”
Unhoused LGBTQ+ are sexually assaulted at three times the rate of non-LGBTIQ+ homeless youth, according to a 2019 study.
Along with the Berberian Shelter in Modesto, Zambrano reported positive experiences with staff at the D Street Shelter in Merced, too. But, she said, the Navigation Center had been “a little bit more difficult” to work with.
CalPride partners with Dignity Health to provide weekly testing for sexually transmitted infections and HIV from there.
Zambrano emphasized the importance of partnerships between public service agencies and LGBTQ+ organizations, as well as adequate training to effectively serve unhoused residents, including trangender individuals.
“You can’t call yourself a space to help individuals get out of dark spaces, and you’re not willing to train your staff on how to better understand these marginalized groups of people,” she said.
How a HUD proposal could exacerbate the issue
A proposed rule by the federal housing department could make it harder for transgender, non-binary and intersex people across the country to access emergency housing.
The goal of the proposed rule is to align with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, called “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
“God created two sexes: male and female,” the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Scott Turner said earlier this year when he announced plans to align federal housing policies with the executive order.
“The Left’s war on biological reality through radical gender ideology will no longer take precedence over the safety and security of America’s most vulnerable women,” Turner said in a statement.
The proposed rule would amend 30 codes regulating federal housing programs to remove or replace the word gender with sex. It defines gender as an “ever-shifting concept” and sex as an “immutable biological classification.”
It would reverse LGBTQIA2S+ protections in housing programs under the federal Equal Access Rule, which was introduced in 2012 and expanded and finalized in 2016.
If passed, shelters would be allowed to verify an individual’s sex if they chose to do so.
It would exacerbate the homelessness crisis and harm vulnerable populations, House Democrat representatives and lawmakers wrote in a letter to HUD.
Approximately 4,600 comments were submitted on the proposed rule during and after its public comment period, which closed on June 29.
HUD is reviewing the proposed rule and has not made a final determination at the time of publication.
Despite the proposed rule change, Zambrano is still advocating for transgender residents to safely access shelter services.
She experienced unsheltered homelessness herself as a young adult in the Central Valley – including in her hometown of Winton, Merced County’s largest unincorporated community. This year nine unsheltered people were counted there this year, down from 10 in 2025.
“I was turned away every single time because I was trans, because they had nowhere to place me,” Zambrano said.
“I know that Merced County is a beacon and a hub of safe space for LGBT people. We work on it every single day,” she said. “Accommodations need to be made for them. We need to figure out a way to comfortably and safely house them.”
