Edgewater is a neighborhood near Lake Michigan, just north of the end of Lake Shore Drive, but south of Evanston.
There is a mansion there which was at one time used as an AIDS hospice. Stan Sloan says he can hear "the voices of the dead men whispering in the walls of the old Edgewater mansion."
Once, not so long ago, when the world was so much more afraid of gays and lesbians, this house was where people with AIDS, shunned by friends and family, could come to live out their final time.
Sloan has
plans to rededicate its use to serve other "people who are still feared, hated and misunderstood."
The AIDS hospice will be transformed over the next few months into the TransLife Center, "a full-service home for the transgendered, offering shelter to nine people at a time, along with medical, housing and job counseling for many more."
It's an effort to move at least some transpeople off the street.
What our heroes in the '60s and '70s went through is what transgenders are going through now.
--Stan Sloan
Reverend Sloan runs Chicago House, an HIV/AIDS organization. When African-American transwomen began showing up as interns in Chicago House's Sweet Miss Giving's Bakery, he understood that he had some learning to do…and undertook that challenge to educate himself.
A typical cycle: Bullied in high school, transgendered young people drop out at alarming rates. As dropouts, they can't get jobs. Unemployed, they turn to prostitution or drugs to make money. Arrested, they become felons. As felons, they become even less employable. Rejected by their families, they land on the violent streets. Unwelcome at many homeless shelters — do they belong with the men or the women? — they stay on the streets. The suicide rate is high.
Sloan recognizes that the GLB community has been reluctant to adopt the transgender cause.
We've been so worried about getting our basic rights that some people fear that to tie our fates to an increasingly visible transgender community will hinder our progress.
--Sloan
So some of the usual funders for projects like the
TransLife Center have decided they aren't interested. Reverend Sloan and the
Chicago House will struggle onward.