Denver nonprofit helping move transgender-identifying people to Colorado

A Denver-based nonprofit is helping transgender-identifying people move from red states to Colorado and has seen an explosion in requests since Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Trans Continental Pipeline (TCP) has received a large number of requests from people who claim they don’t feel safe in their home states and want to move to Colorado due to the state’s pro-transgender policies.

TCP helps them with the logistics and costs of moving. It also connects them with housing in the Denver metro area and provides them with up to a month of free rent via its housing network. 

TCP founder Keira Richards started the nonprofit in April and got the idea from the dating app Tinder. 

“Purely need-based. Mostly out of Tinder, actually,” Richards told Denver 7. “My friends and I started seeing a lot of people coming into town saying, I’m new here. I don’t know anyone. And Tinder is one of the first places people go. How else do you make connections, I guess. So we started name-trading. That developed into a mutual aid network. And that developed into a nonprofit. And here we are.” 

The nonprofit fielded 22 relocation requests in October. But then, shortly after the presidential election, TCP received over 400 requests, and Richards claims it now has a waiting list of over 1,000. 

“I’ve seen families with middle schoolers,” Richards told Denver 7. “The oldest I’ve seen, I believe, was mid-70s. All identities. All races, religions, creeds. Just every walk of life. 

“We have people reaching out saying they were recently a victim of a hate crime and fearing for their lives. We have people reaching out saying, ‘We’ve been planning this for a minute. We have a couple of questions.’ It really runs the gamut; everything in-between.” 

Richards maintains no other nonprofits in the country offer a similar service. He says TCP’s team of 12 volunteers has helped relocate 100 people to date. 

As a liberal enclave in the western United States, Colorado has long been a popular state for LGBT-identifying individuals to relocate. 

“Unfortunately, if you are a family fleeing your state and you start looking at your options, you quickly realize there aren’t that many safe states out there,” PFLAG Denver representative Ellie Brooks told PRISM. 

Colorado lawmakers banned discrimination based on so-called gender identity in 2008.