On the evening of August 21, folks from across the Central Valley and beyond gathered at Fresno City College in the Old Administration Building to kickoff the 4th annual Queer Housing Summit. The summit, even in its short history, has expanded to include participants nationwide and globally, bringing together people who share a common fundamental belief: housing is a human right.
Unlike previous years, the summit spanned two days. Participants travelled from New York, Denver, Atlanta, and Canada, with keynote speakers Dr. Amber Alton from Minneapolis and Mercury Stardust, also known as the Trans Handy Ma’am, from Wisconsin.
Over the two days, participants had the opportunity to choose from workshops, panels and discussions covering topics ranging from pathways to homeownership to tenant organizing and rent strikes to anticapitalist business practices and more. This year’s theme was Beyond the Borderlines.
“The 2026 theme examines how LGBTQ+ communities build connection, safety, and collective power beyond the systems and barriers that seek to divide them. At a time when LGBTQ+ rights and access to safe housing continue to face increasing challenges nationwide, the Queer Housing Summit creates a space to learn, organize, and imagine community-led solutions,” a representative shared in a press release.
“At a time when LGBTQ+ rights and access to safe housing continue to face increasing challenges nationwide, the Queer Housing Summit creates a space to learn, organize and imagine community-led solutions.”
Friday night’s keynote speaker was Dr. Amber Alton, a Black non-binary sociologist from Minneapolis. They spoke to their experience as a Black person navigating housing in the United States.
“Their talk was incredible… They shared that they did not ever imagine that they could become a homeowner, but within the last few months they were able to achieve homeownership with their wife,” Kiel Lopez-Schmidt, founder and president of South Tower Community Land Trust (STCLT), the Fresno-based organization that first imagined and co-hosts the event shared in an interview with Community Alliance.
“They talked about that experience and the challenges in the context of the system, not just from an individual perspective, but how the different systems in the United States impact that experience.”
“A large part of their talk focused on how civic resources within cities, especially Minneapolis and Fresno, share a common problem: so much of those resources go toward policing and law enforcement that there is so little left for the things that actually make people’s lives better and safer, including access to parks and community spaces and healthy quality housing.”
While the annual summit centers on the queer experience, many of the challenges that queer people face overlap with other intersections. Lopez-Schmidt likened the intentions of the organization, their efforts and the summit to the “curb cut effect.”
“It was disability rights… advocates that fought for curbs and to have ramps and be accessible. And yes, that was led by people in wheelchairs and mobility devices, but it also, once those are done, it helps people that maybe are walking with a cane or a mother with the stroller, a delivery driver with a dolly full of packages.”
STCLT is a nonprofit organization working to create a barrier-free South Tower neighborhood by building shared prosperity, affordable housing opportunities and community health through collective ownership and neighborhood investment.
The organization’s inception originated when a community initiative to turn an old police station into a park, now Broadway Parque in Tower at the corner of Broadway and Elizabeth, brought together neighborhood advocates for the park who would eventually become many of the founding board members of STCLT.
“If it wasn’t for community members and the organizing we did, that park would not exist… it was the organizing of that park that seeded our first founding board members and kind of prompted me to lead the establishment of the South Tower Community Land Trust. So it’s kind of our origin story.”
Five years later, that original vision has grown into a much larger effort to create housing, commercial space and community resources throughout the neighborhood.
Several significant developments are now in the works for South Tower Community Land Trust. The organization owns a commercial building where local radical bookstore Judging by the Cover, has been given space at an affordability rate that works for them, creating another example of how STCLT is approaching neighborhood development beyond housing alone.
The organization also recently secured funds to remodel its second house, with plans to sell it before the end of the year. Eight to nine additional homes are currently in pre-development, with pending funding expected to come in October.
On the organization’s first donated property, a farmer’s market is also being opened, adding another community use to the land and creating an opportunity for residents to access fresh food.
If you missed the summit this year, STCLT fully intends to hold it again next for its fifth anniversary.
“We need folks within the community to know that we’re creating this space for them and that they need to show up and know that we can build power together to make a difference.
And if you attended, consider who you might bring next year.
“I said to the people who attended the closing, ‘are you coming next year?’ And everybody’s cheering and I was like look next to you, there’s empty seats. Imagine – Who should be sitting next to you and bring them, we need you.”
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