Arts & Entertainment
SPOTLIGHTING LGBT HOMELESSNESS: Casa Ruby offers short- and long-term housing
Founder is trans immigrant and former homeless person
Ruby Corado, on right, with one of her residents. (Washington Blade photo by Grace Perry)
This story is part of our contribution to the 2018 #DCHomelessCrisis news blitz. Local media outlets will be reporting and discussing stories about ending homelessness in the nation’s capital all day. The collaborative body of work is cataloged at dchomelesscrisis.press.
During the early 1990s, Ruby Corado spent most nights in public parks throughout D.C., trying to meet the basic needs of the homeless LGBT youth who had no safe space to go after 5 p.m. when the HIV clinics closed.
And so the movement began.
Now, 26 years later, Corado is the director of Casa Ruby, a local bilingual and multicultural organization founded in 2012 that provides housing and social services to LGBT individuals 24 hours a day.
The transgender El Salvador native says Casa Ruby started as an “emergency room.”
“We were taking care of very sick people that were disposed (of) by society and that were barely holding on,” she says.
While the organization continues to do emergency work when necessary, its primary focus is now on preventative work and long-term planning and personal development.
“Our goal is to have someone come to Casa Ruby and three years down the line, they will no longer be homeless,” Corado says.
Casa Ruby can accommodate up to 100 individuals across its four housing programs: hypothermia or low barrier, short-term, transitional and permanent. Residents in every program receive three meals a day, meaning Casa Ruby prepares and delivers 4,000 meals every month.
Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the hypothermia or low barrier program offers anyone in need a place to rest with no commitment or age restrictions. At least one case manager is on site at all times. Corado estimates that Casa Ruby has housed 9,600 people in this program over the past six months alone.
“We never close,” Corado says. “Our doors are always open.”
Stephanie Carey, a current resident at Casa Ruby since February, sees the organization as the oasis Ruby intended. The 29-year-old Maryland native recently moved to D.C. to join the Casa Ruby community.
“I had been kind of ostracized by my family. I come from a very Evangelical, southern, conservative family,” Carey says, who identifies as pansexual and outside the gender binary. “I was going through some hard times and I Googled LGBT shelters and Casa Ruby was the first one that popped up.”
All three of the other housing programs are reserved for LGBT youth ages 18-24. The short-term program provides these clients stable housing and support services for three-six months and aims to help them transition to more permanent housing. Transitional housing is similar to short term, but clients may stay up to 18 months. Also, it requires that residents complete 35 hours of “personal improvement” each week. These hours may be completed any number of ways, including through school or an employment service.
Permanent housing is designed for residents who have stable jobs but are unable to secure long-term housing.
“Landlords never really saw them as ideal renters” because “they were either too gay, too black, or too big or something,” Corado says. These residents work and pay rent for these houses owned by Casa Ruby.
The only eligibility requirement might surprise you.
“When you come to Casa Ruby, you don’t have to be willing to give love to other people, but you have to be willing to accept it, and it begins with that,” Corado says.
Around 215 youth have gone through short-term, transitional and permanent housing since 2012. Despite currently having 100 beds, Casa Ruby still has a 100-person waitlist for its programs, which it’s hoping to eliminate with more funding and resources.
In 2017, Casa Ruby’s annual operating budget was $1.7 million and Corado projects 2018’s will be around $2.1 million. Approximately half of the budget comes from government support and the other half comes from individual donations and grants from foundations.
“We have thousands of one-dollar donations,” Corado says. “Which is great because I think it stays true to the mission of being grassroots.”
Even though her advocacy and activism has changed and evolved over the past few decades, Corado says her role has fundamentally stayed the same: “My job as the founder and director today still is to make sure that we restore dignity to people that have been denied their dignity for so long.”
For Carey, Casa Ruby serves a multitude of purposes from simply “a place to rest your head” to a space “to be around people you identify with. … Casa Ruby is everybody’s home.”
a&e features
Memorial for groundbreaking bisexual activist set for May 2
Loraine Hutchins remembered as a ‘force of nature’
The Montgomery County Pride Center will host a celebration honoring the life and legacy of Loraine Hutchins, Ph.D., on May 2. People are invited to attend the onsite memorial or a livestream event. The on-site event will begin at 10 a.m. with a meet-and-greet mixer before moving into a memorial service around the theme “Loraine a Force of Nature!” at 11 a.m., a panel talk at 12 p.m., break out sessions for artists, academics, and activists to build on her legacy at 1 p.m. and a closing reception at 2 p.m.
Attendees are encouraged to register for the on-site memorial gathering or the livestreamed memorial. The goal of this event is also to collect stories and memories of Loraine. Attendees and others can share their stories at padlet.com.
An obituary for Hutchins was published in the Bladelast Nov. 24, where people can learn more about her activism in the bisexual community. A private service for friends and family was held in December but this memorial service is open to all.
Alongside her groundbreaking work organizing for U.S. bisexual rights and liberation including co-editing “Bi Any Other Name: BIsexual People Speak Out” (1991), she also integrated faith into her sexual education and advocacy work. Her 2001 doctoral dissertation, “Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary U.S. Sacred Sexuality Traditions and Trends,” offered a pointed queer and feminist analysis to sex-neutral and sex-positive spiritual traditions in the United States. Her thesis was also groundbreaking in exploring the intersections between sex workers and those in caregiving professionals, including spiritual ones.
In an oral history interview conducted by Michelle Mueller back in August 2023, Hutchins described herself as a “priestess without a congregation.” While she has occasionally had a sense of community and feels part of a group of loving people, she admitted that “I don’t feel like we have the shape or the purpose that we need.”
“I’ve often experienced being the Cassandra in the room, the Cassandra in the community. Somebody who’s kind of way out there ahead, thinking through the strategic action points that my community hasn’t gotten to yet, and getting a lot of resistance and hostile responses from people who are frightened by dissent and conflict and not ready for the changes we have to make to survive,” she said.
“For somebody who’s bisexual in an out political way and who’s been a spokesperson for the polyamory movement in an out political way, it’s very exposing. And it’s very important to me to be able to try to explain and help other people understand the connection between spirituality and sexuality,” she explained citing how even as a graduate student she was “exploring how to feel erotic and spiritual, and not feel them in conflict with each other in my own spiritual contemplative life and my own sensual body awareness of being alive in the world.”
“Every religion has a sense of sacred sexuality. It’s just they put a lot of boundaries and regulations on it, and if we have a spiritual practice that is totally affirming of women’s priesthood and of gay people, queer people’s ability to minister to everyone and to be ministered to be everyone, what does that do to the gender of God, or our understanding of how we practice our spirituality and our sexuality in community and privately?”
“There’s no easy answer,” she concludes, and she continued to grapple with these questions throughout her life, co-editing another seminal text, “Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual, and Polysexual Perspectives,” published in 2012. Her work blending spiritual and queer liberation remains groundbreaking to this day.
Rev. Eric Eldritch, a local community organizer and ordained Pagan minister with Circle Sanctuary who has worked for decades with the DC Center’s Center Faith to organize the Pride Interfaith Service, is eager to highlight this element of her legacy at the memorial service next month.
History
Julius’ Bar ‘sip-in’ laid groundwork for Stonewall
Tuesday marked 60 years since four gay activists held protest
While Stonewall is widely considered the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the U.S., a lesser-known protest inside a Greenwich Village bar three years earlier helped lay critical groundwork for what would follow.
Tuesday marked 60 years since the Julius’ Bar “sip in.”
On April 21, 1966, four gay rights activists — Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, John Timmons, and later Randy Wicker — walked into Julius’ Bar and staged what would become known as a “sip-in” to challenge state liquor regulations on serving alcoholic beverages to gay men — with a drink.
Modeled after the sit-ins that challenged racial segregation across the American South, the protest was designed to confront discriminatory practices targeting LGBTQ patrons in public spaces.
At the time, the Mattachine Society — one of the country’s earliest gay rights groups — was actively pushing back against policies enforced by the New York State Liquor Authority. One of those policies could have resulted in the loss of liquor licenses for serving known or suspected gay men and lesbians. The participants had visited multiple establishments, openly identified themselves as homosexual, and requested a drink — with the anticipation of being denied.
Their final stop was Julius’, where reporters and a photographer had gathered to document the moment. When Leitsch declared their identity, the bartender covered their glasses and refused service, reportedly saying, “I think it’s against the law.” The next day, the New York Times ran a story with the headline, “3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars,” cementing the moment in the public record.
Though initially framed with disrespect — the term “sip-in” itself was coined as a play on civil rights protests — the action marked a turning point. It brought national attention to the systemic discrimination LGBTQ people faced and helped catalyze changes in how liquor laws were enforced. In the years that followed, the protest contributed to the emergence of licensed, more openly gay-friendly bars, which became central social and organizing spaces for LGBTQ communities.
The Washington Blade originally covered when the bar was officially added to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
Today, historians and advocates increasingly recognize the “sip-in” as a key pre-Stonewall milestone. According to the New York City LGBTQ Historic Sites Project, the protest not only increased visibility of the early LGBTQ rights movement but also exposed widespread surveillance and entrapment tactics used against the community.
Marking the 60th anniversary of the event, commemorations have taken place in New York and across the country. Reflecting on its enduring legacy, Amanda Davis, executive director of the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project, spoke about the event.
“Julius’ Bar is a place you can visit and viscerally connect with history,” said Davis. “We’re thrilled to have solidarity locations across the country join us in commemorating the ‘sip-in’’s 60th anniversary and the queer community’s First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.”
For current stewards of the historic bar, the responsibility of preserving that legacy remains front of mind.
“It’s a privilege and a responsibility to be the steward of a place so important to American and LGBTQ history,” said current owner of Julius’ Bar, Helen Buford. “The events of the 1966 Sip-In here at Julius’ resonated across the country and inspired countless others to stand proud for their rights.”
The timing couldn’t have come at a more important moment, Kymn Goldstein, executive director of the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, explained.
“At a time when our community faces renewed challenges, coming together in resilience and solidarity reminds us of the power in our collective resistance,” Goldstein said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to defending rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, is currently tracking 519 anti-LGBTQ bills across the U.S. The majority are targeted at restricting transgender rights — particularly related to gender-affirming care, sports participation, and the use of public bathrooms.
Some additional groups and bars that held their own “sip-in” as solidarity events to uplift this historic milestone are from across the country include:
Alice Austen House at Steiny’s Pub, Staten Island, N.Y.
Bellows Falls Pride Committee at PK’s Irish Pub, Bellows Falls, Vt.
Brick Road Coffee, Mesa, Ariz.
Brick Road Coffee, Tempe, Ariz.
Dick Leitsch’s Family at Old Louisville Brewery, Louisville, Ky.
The Faerie Playhouse & LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana at Le Cabaret, New Orleans
Harlem Pride & John Reddick at L’Artista Italian Kitchen & Bar, New York
JOYR!DE KiKi at Loafers Cocktail Bar, New York
Matthew Lawrence & Jason Tranchida / Headmaster at Deadbeats Bar, Providence, R.I.
Mazer Lesbian Archives at Alana’s Coffee, Los Angeles
New Hope Celebrates at The Club Room, New Hope, Pa.
Queer Memory Project at the University of Evansville Multicultural Student Commons / Ridgway University Center, Evansville, Ind.
Sandy Jack’s Bar, Brooklyn, N.Y.
St. Louis LGBT History Project at Just John Club, St. Louis
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch was held at Salamander Washington DC on Sunday, April 19. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) was presented with the Allyship Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
State Department implements anti-trans bathroom policy
I’m telling the scared little girl I once was it’s okay to feel free
Memorial for groundbreaking bisexual activist set for May 2
ROSENSTEIN: Chavous for Democratic D.C. Council-at-Large
I don’t see the point in a relationship
Inside the lonely world of MAGA gay men
PHOTOS: Night of Champions
PHOTOS: National Champagne Brunch
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
