New local LGBTQ support services group debuts D.C. Safe Haven to provide ‘harm reduction’ programs discontinued by Casa Ruby

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

More than two dozen people turned out July 28 for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the official opening of D.C. Safe Haven, an LGBTQ community services organization, including a drop-in center, located at 331 H St., N.E.

Transgender rights advocate Iya Dammons, the founder and executive director of Baltimore Safe Haven, has been working for the past year to lay the groundwork and set up the infrastructure for D.C. Safe Haven, she told the Washington Blade. Dammons said she would serve as interim executive director of the D.C. Safe Haven and continue as CEO of both the Baltimore and D.C. groups after a permanent executive director is named for the D.C. Safe Haven.

Among other things, D.C. Safe Haven will provide many of the important services offered by the D.C. LGBTQ community services organization Casa Ruby, with a special outreach to the transgender community, before Casa Ruby shut down all of its operations last year.

“We have a computer lab, there’s a case manager, there’s a peer educator, there’s a harm reduction set up,” Dammons said in describing the services that will be offered in its second-floor space at the H Street location. “We have supplies such as Narcan,” she said, referring to the nasal spray medication used to revive someone having an opioid drug overdose.

“We have condoms, safer sex kits, and you can get meals here, hot showers, and you can do laundry,” she continued. “You can also get a change of clothing.” And in what Dammons called a particularly important development, the

University of Maryland will operate a once-a-week clinic on Tuesdays at the D.C. Safe Haven offices to do sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment services.

Dammons said another important service D.C. Safe Have plans to offer soon at a separate location will be a low barrier shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth between the ages of 18 and 24.

She also has pointed out that although she has operated the Baltimore Safe Haven since 2018, she is a native Washingtonian who was born and raised and went to school in D.C.

“All of my family is here,” she told the Blade. “The thing that makes it phenomenal for me – the assets I had here in Washington, D.C. made me the woman I am today,” she said.

Among those attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony, held on the sidewalk outside the D.C. Safe Haven’s entrance door was longtime D.C. transgender rights advocate Earline Budd; Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs; Ryan Bos, executive director of the D.C. Capital Pride Alliance; and Dominique Morgan, Director of Funds for Trans Generations, a project of the national foundation Borealis Philanthropy.

Morgan told the Blade her foundation would play a role in helping to support D.C. Safe Haven financially.

Others attending were members of the D.C. Safe Haven staff and board of directors. Dammons introduced and invited them to join her, along with community supporters and LGBTQ people who already have begun to receive some of its services, in a group photo during and after the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“To all of you, I love you and this is just a start,” Dammons told the gathering. “I want you all to understand that Black Trans Women Matters and that our representation matters,” she said.

“So, with that being said, let’s open this place up,” Dammons said. “Our team, our sisters, and everyone, I want you all standing behind me because no one is greater than you all. And I’m doing this, but I can give the scissors to everybody here because I want you all to build this with me.”