The director of a Seattle homelessness agency has resigned after her office’s annual conference featured a transgender stripper who danced topless and gave lap dances.
Kira Zylstra, acting director of All Home, King County’s agency for homelessness, resigned over the weekend, according to an email from a county spokesperson sent to the Seattle Times.
The Times reported:
The spokesperson said that when officials at the county’s Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) found out about “a performance that was inappropriate for the conference,” they started an investigation into the event “and the leadership of All Home.”
“The investigation of the event and the leadership of All Home is currently underway,” spokesperson Sherry Hamilton wrote in the email.
Zylstra was placed on paid leave after it was reported her agency hired a transgender stripper to dance topless at its annual homelessness conference.
Black transgender stripper Beyoncé Black St. James reportedly “danced on tables, gave lap dances, and stripped down to a pair of silver pasties as people threw dollar bills” during the homelessness conference held on December 9, noted Erica C. Barnett at her website, The C Is For Crank.
The Times reported St. James’s striptease was referred to in the program only as a “cultural presentation.”
The theme of the conference was “decolonizing our collective work.”
City and county employees, donors, and representatives of Catholic Community Services, Mary’s Place, and Neighborhood House, were all in attendance at the homelessness event.
According to the report, the All Home agency may no longer exist in the near future. Both King County and the Seattle City Council voted to create a new “regional homelessness authority.”