Diego is a transgender man, meaning that he was born female but felt for a long time that that didn’t quite fit, and so he transitioned and now lives every day as the man he has long known himself to be. When the and his longtime partner Cynthia went to buy a house, landlords would question Diego’s character and react negatively when they saw Diego write out on the application his name from before he transitioned. Legally, the documents required his birth name.

Sometimes Diego and Cynthia would face outright discrimination, but more often their applications were simply submitted with no reply or follow-up. Diego and Cynthia suspected that for at least a few of the non-replies, the reason was because the landlord or realtor did not like that he is transgender. The couple ultimately discussed the idea of living separately in order to make things easier, but luckily, a friend of Cynthia’s was able to set the couple up with a home.