The Old Administration Building at Fresno City College.
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The Queer Housing Summit, a project created by the South Tower Community Land Trust, will hold their fourth annual summit this weekend at Fresno City College.
Kiel Lopez-Schmidt, the executive director of the South Tower Community Land Trust, said the Queer Housing Summit was born from a desire to bring people together to develop a strategy to tackle LGBTQ+ housing issues.
“If we’re going to create housing solutions for the queer community, it needs to be queer folks that are creating those and that are informing it every step of the way. And so that’s what we try to create the space for that,” Lopez-Schmidt said.
Some of these housing issues that inspired the summit were highlighted in a 2022 report titled Nowhere to Go, a housing assessment of LGBTQ+ people living in Fresno County led by Katherine Fobear of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Fresno State University; Trans-EMotion; and the EOC LGBTQ+ Resource Center.
The report found that 67% of LGBTQ+ individuals surveyed identified as renters, while nearly 24% reported being denied housing based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and 24.8% had experienced homelessness in the previous two years.
The first Queer Housing Summit was held in 2023 in the Tower Theatre lounge with about 100 attendees and one day of programming.
In the past three years, Lopez-Schmidt has seen the event grow to over 200 in person attendees, 80 online attendees, with programming now spanning two days — necessitating a larger space for the summit.
This year’s summit, with the theme “Over the Borderline” will be held in the old administration building at Fresno City College.
“Over the Borderline, is a direct affirmation that housing is an essential right for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, citizenship status, or income level,” the Queer Housing Summit website states.
The programming features over 40 speakers, drag performances, poets, and two keynote speakers: sociologist and content creator Amber Alton and home repair educator and TikToker Mercury Stardust.
Alicia Arakelian, a Realtor with Park Metro Realty, is one of the speakers at this weekend’s summit.
A leader of the local Fresno Fair Housing Advocates Committee and a member of the National LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, Arakelian has seen discrimination towards the LGBTQ+ community in real estate inspiring her to advocate for understanding and elevating the community.
Along with fellow Realtors Joseph Haydock and Lauren Halvorsen, Arakelian will lead attendees through an interactive presentation intended to spark conversation and demystify the road to becoming homeowners.
Arakelian hopes the presentation will show attendees that homeownership is possible, despite the hardships first-time home buyers might face, regardless if they are a part of the LBGTQ+ community.
“We’re here to educate, elevate, and lift up our community, and have more understanding about housing, different options for housing, and the groups and the organizations that are there for them to know about and have resources to go to,” Arakelian said.
Lopez-Schmidt says that while hard conversations take place at the summit, he wants to make sure joy, creativity, and art are present too — “resistance through queer joy,” as the website states.
“A lot of folks are responding that like this is the most inclusive summit that they’ve ever attended, they felt really seen, that this was a place for them” Lopez-Schmidt said.
“We’ve seen people get jobs out of this summit. We’ve seen collaborations build out of this… so it’s connecting a lot of dots.”
The event runs from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Friday, August 21, and 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 22.
The summit can be attended either in person or virtual with Spanish and ASL interpretation options.
Tickets are available on the Queer Housing Summit website for $35, with a $5 discount for seniors and students and scholarships available if the price is a barrier to attending.
The Fresno Bee
Grace Gillio is an intern for The Fresno Bee. She graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a degree in journalism and English.