Once upon a time, during the pandemic days, I wrote a weekly blog. It started out unintentionally as a selfish way for me to clear my head. I wrote them on Facebook, first only shared with “friends,” and then to the “public.” As people told me they enjoyed reading my ramblings, and as my mentor/friend, founder of Human Services Campus, Mike McQuaid requested of me, we started to share the weekly Reflections in our e-newsletter.

Fast forward a couple of years, the pandemic chaos gone and my brain a little clearer, I decreased the frequency of my writing. And now we share a monthly Reflection as an organization.

Recently I have been asked by several people to share more, to write regularly, maybe even weekly. When I look at my calendar, the thought of a weekly commitment is daunting. So, with this “Irregular, Random Thought,” I am going to start writing more often, without a commitment to exactly how often.

Today, I write to share an observation, of a notice from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sent May 8, 2025. HUD is the Federal department that provides funding, guidance, and regulation to housing, emergency shelter, and homeless services.

HUD requires communities to conduct annual point-in-time (PIT) counts of the homeless, both sheltered and unsheltered. HUD dictates a set of data that must be reported, which is rather typical demographic information. This includes ages of people in the “household,” ethnicity/race, gender, and whether or not they are chronically homeless, severely mentally ill, chronic substance abuse, Veterans, HIV/AIDS, Victims of Domestic Violence, Unaccompanied Youth, Parenting Youth, Children of Parenting Youth. This is all HUD verbiage (see https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/). In looking at the 2024 PIT reports I do not see “Sex” in the data.

The HUD email of May 8 states gender data will not be collected as part of the 2025 PIT submission. And that this is in accordance with the Executive Order 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

My knee jerk reaction was “what?” and talking to myself, “how do we design and deliver services for men and women safely and to meet their needs if we don’t know their gender?” How do we incorporate safe spaces for people who identify outside of the boxes of “man” and “woman”? Even though we have the gender data locally, HUD won’t be informed and be able to set policy that recognizes the needed differences in program and space design as well as staffing requirements without knowing gender.

The name of the Executive Order (EO) is a link in the email. It took me days to click on it, as I felt a twitch developing in my eye. Once I clicked on that link to read the EO, I had to read it, walk away, and then read it again. As a woman I was very curious how I am being harmed or threatened because of how other humans identify their gender.

I’m still not clear on that. I am concerned though that women/trans/non-binary/questioning may be harmed by shelters that are not cognizant of our physical needs, if they are required to follow Federal guidance that does not recognize Gender. And I am concerned for all of us if we are forced to direct people in to “man” and “woman” only shelters, when there are people who will choose not to enter shelter and will stay outdoors, potentially unsafe and unhealthy.

I am clear that there is confusion between “sex” and “gender.” “Sex” is the assignment at birth, based on chromosomes and anatomy, male/female. “Gender” is a social identity that can be man, woman, transgender, non-binary, and more.

I am not clear on how the Administration is OK with eliminating the data collection and reporting of “Gender” and wants to only report/collect/say the word “Sex” when at the same time they are also looking to penalize people for sexualized content and material (like pornography). On the one hand they want to identify people by Sex, and on the other hand they want to regulate content, potentially threatening freedom of speech. Please keep in mind, I’m not promoting pornography. I am pointing out the contradiction.

And while we spend time reading these emails and EOs, analyzing their purpose and effect, and estimating how to respond, we are spending less time on actually working to end homelessness.