Ridley Holmes, a case manager at The Night Ministry, discusses the group’s work as the federal government targets services for trans people. “When it comes to our youth, it’s time to really start standing up.”

By Mare Ralph

Ridley Holmes, a case manager at The Night Ministry poses for a portrait in The Crib overnight shelter inside The Night Ministry in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood on Friday, April 4, 2025. (Talia Sprague/for City Bureau)

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, transgender Americans have repeatedly been in the crosshairs of his second administration.

One of the first acts was an executive order limiting the medical care for transgender youth and young adults. Already disproportionately targeted for harassment on an individual and legislative basis, funding cuts implemented by the Department of Governmental Efficiency have drastically reduced social services for transgender Chicagoans experiencing homelessness and housing instability. 

Illinois and Chicago historically have encouraged trans people to relocate to the area to receive gender-affirming care, and have enacted anti-discrimination laws to protect that care. Several local organizations focus exclusively on providing mental health care, housing support, safe transportation and community for trans people. But the federal attacks on trans people already have had devastating effects here. In response to the executive order banning gender-affirming care – blocked from going into effect – Lurie Children’s Hospital paused gender care surgeries for patients under 19. UI Health also faces a lawsuit for pausing that care. 

One of the key community organizations supporting vulnerable young adults is The Night Ministry, which provides emergency shelter for youth, 18 to 24, at The Crib at 1735 N. Ashland Ave. For Ridley Holmes, a youth outreach case manager, his personal experience with a difficult and chaotic childhood informs his passion to support youth. He moved to Chicago and now uses his life experience as motivation to make the road easier for those who come after him. 

“I really just want to be a positive elder queer in the community that is trying to reach out and help, [not only] LGBTQ youth, but youth in general. It’s my way of helping my community.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How long has the Crib existed? What services do you offer? 

We've been open for several years, but it's a relatively new spot. It's a really pretty space. We have our emergency overnight shelter, 7pm to 9am, and that provides two meals. You can take a shower there. There's laundry services. We have a computer room, obviously beds, and that's fully staffed the entire time. At any time, we can have 21 clients.

Then we also have Youth Outreach Team, doing outreach as we service youth, 14 to 24 in the community as well. We talk to a lot of people. We do case management, we help folks connect with housing. We find them any kind of employment resources they need. We're a broker of resources. 

What proportion of transgender folks that you serve are Chicago transplants or have recently arrived in Chicago?

It's about 50/50, 50% are Chicago natives, and then 50% are out of town youth. A lot of times we'll just see youth just be like, “Nope, I can't do my situation. I can't stay at home. I can't be in the environment I'm in anymore,” and hop onto a Greyhound [bus] and come to Chicago. They're just like, “I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm not home anymore. That's all that matters.”

The common room at the Crib is seen inside The Night Ministry’s overnight shelter, The Crib, in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood on Friday, April 4, 2025. (Talia Sprague/for City Bureau)

What additional support to transgender young adults need when they are new to the city? 

As a transplant myself, who came to Chicago for the queer community, you get here and it's so big. There's so much going on and there's just so many different areas where queer folk congregate. So it's really about not only getting them connected with services – maybe even medical services that were not available to them at home – but where to find community. The most successful they're going to be is when they have strong community support.

Often, a lot of trans youth will come into shelters and they're facing microaggressions, transphobia, homophobia, not only [from other] clients but also workers. There isn't a ton of representation when it comes to shelter workers being trans. [Something] that shelters and nonprofits could be doing better is getting more queer employees in there that help trans folk feel safe in the space. It is very common for trans youth in Chicago to just not go to shelters.

What typically happens to trans youth who don’t go to shelters?

A lot of trans youth from out-of-state have friends in Chicago that they'll come and stay with. But even then, sometimes it's temporary. In the most extreme cases, I've seen people engage in sex work, which is a valid source of work, if you ask me. [But] When you're in a basic survival situation, it tends to become very exploitative and unsafe. I don't really see folks staying out in the encampments, just because I think it's a little dangerous for them. I definitely see a lot of doubling up and a lot of reaching out to older queer folk, whether it be to seek assistance and get appropriate assistance, or an exploitative, like “sugar daddy” kind of way.

What has been the impact of the Trump administration’s efforts to slash federal funds for social services and health care for trans people? 

When [the Office of Management and Budget] first [released the January 27 memo pausing federal funding], that was just pure chaos in the nonprofit world. Nobody knew what was going on. [The Night Ministry] is very lucky in the sense that most of our funds come from private individual donors. But that's not always the case for a lot of nonprofits who rely on government funding. [We've] seen a lot of [nonprofits] preemptively cutting things just to try to maintain what kind of funding they have to keep going.

My team, our big focus this year, has been going into drop-in spaces to offer additional case management services, because the amount of case managers [is] going to go down. We have a very specialized role in the fact that we can get folks onto the Coordinated Entry System, which is like a huge wait list for everything in the city. Having housing resource specialists who can do these assessments is really important right now. If [other organizations] are cutting roles, there's less and less of us to do the work.

That's why my team has started going into these places to offer supplemental case management, to try to catch people who are falling through the cracks.

What is the role for LGBTQ+ allies at this time?

We can all do trainings, but until you internalize a lot of this information, it's not going to stick. The idea of [...] getting somebody's pronouns right: if you don't internalize that they are [the] gender that they say they are, you're never going to really get it right. It's a lot of changing your mindset about what gender [...] is and what it means, really doing the work to change how you view gender, especially when it comes to our clients.

I think it's really an important time right now to be assessing, what do you do in your daily life that helps the folks that are marginalized around me? This is not only just for LGBTQ allies. This is BIPOC allies, just allies for any kind of marginalized group, right? While you can't liberate anybody, because only the marginalized liberate themselves, you can certainly help in that effort to help us survive through this administration. I just think it's really important right now for folks to donate money when they can. I'm not telling you you have to donate $1,000 but like, Hey, if you can donate to a place like Brave Space Alliance every month, five bucks, or something like that? Now's the time.

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