LGBT-friendly senior housing opening across U.S. cities

CHICAGO — In his younger days, Ed Lund struggled to live openly as a gay man.

But as Lund, 69, enters his golden years, he has found a place where he is certain he will be comfortable. He's among the charter residents moving into the newly opened Town Hall development in Chicago, one of the first affordable, LGBT-friendly housing communities for the elderly in the country.

"This feel likes home," says Lund, who came out as a gay man during the AIDS epidemic and lost his job of 15 years in the early 1980s after his boss learned his sexual orientation. "As you get older, it just feels more comfortable to be around people who understand and share your background. It's also nice not to have worry about letting something slip out."

As lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people age, cities and LGBT advocates are grappling with how to deal with the needs of a generation that came out of the closet in more complicated times.

Perhaps the most sensitive issue for older gays and lesbians, particularly the poor, is housing discrimination. LGBT advocates also lament that the country's elderly-care services haven't evolved as quickly as the general population, which national polls show is increasingly accepting of gays and lesbians.

Communities are addressing the issue.With the opening of Town Hall, which had more than 400 applicants for 79 studio and one-bedroom apartments, Chicago became the third city in the USA since last year to open housing catering to low-income LGBT people.

Similar housing developments in Minneapolis and Philadelphia, both of which opened late last year, also received far more applicants than they could accommodate. Two more LGBT-friendly projects for low-income seniors are in the pipeline for San Francisco and Los Angeles, which opened the first such development in 2007.

Officials with the Center on Halsted and the Heartland Alliance, the two Chicago-based organizations that spearheaded the Town Hall project, say they are also exploring building another LGBT-friendly development in the region. The organizations screened applicants for Town Hall.

The push for LGBT-friendly housing comes as the gay rights movement has made huge strides.

Same-sex marriage advocates have racked up 20 victories in courts over the past two years. Twenty states and Washington, D.C., as well as more than 150 cities and counties across the USA, have laws prohibiting discrimination against LGBT individuals.

PROGRESS AND DISCRIMINATION

Despite the progress, the population faces higher rates of housing discrimination than their straight peers. A Department of Housing and Urban Development study published last year found that in 50 metropolitan markets, heterosexual couples were favored by landlords over gay and lesbian couples 16% of the time.

LGBT advocates say the discrimination is more pronounced for the elderly. In testing of elder housing in 10 states, 52% of lesbian, gay and bisexual applicants faced adverse treatment, including being shown fewer rental options and being quoted higher rents than heterosexual couples shopping for apartments, according to a 2014 study published by the Equal Rights Center in Washington, D.C.

Focus on the issue comes at a time when the elderly LGBT population is growing. About 3 million Americans 65 or older identify as LGBT, and that number is expected to double by 2030, according to the Equal Rights Center.

"When you look at the developments that have been built so far, it accounts for only about 500 units across the country," says Barbara Satin, a Minneapolis transgender activist who was involved in the push for LGBT-friendly senior housing there. "There is still an enormous demand that needs to be filled."

MARKETING TO LGBT

Prospective residents don't have to be gay to be eligible to rent at any of the housing developments across the country, but the projects have been heavily marketed to the LGBT community. All residents have to meet age requirements and remain below an income threshold.

At the new Chicago development, seniors are connected to services and programming provided by the Center on Halsted, one of the nation's premier LGBT community centers.

The center is next door to the apartment building. Services include computer classes, HIV testing and classes on nutrition. There are plans for matchmaking.

For some poor, older LGBT people, the housing is attractive because it assures them that they can grow old in a place where they don't have to worry about hiding their sexual orientation. It's not uncommon for the LGBT elderly to feel that for their safety, they have go back into the closet late in life, Satin says.

Lucretia Kirby, who moved into the recently opened LGBT-friendly complex in Minneapolis, met her late partner at another affordable housing development in nearby St. Paul. After the two began dating, Kirby says, they were harassed by other residents and were targets of threatening notes slipped under their doors.

Kirby said she complained to managers but little was done. When the new LGBT-friendly Minneapolis development began accepting applications, she jumped at the opportunity to move.

"If I would have continued to live there, I would have died emotionally," she says. "I was going down a road where I would have killed myself."

In Chicago, the gleaming new Town Hall construction was built on the site of the Police Department's old Town Hall district station, a controversial symbol of the once-seething tensions between the city's police and gay community.

That station was at the center of police raids on the neighborhood's gay bars and clubs during the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the area's older gay residents still have unpleasant memories of spending a night in the Town Hall district holding cell, says Modesto "Tico" Valle, executive director of the Center on Halsted.

Most of the old police complex was demolished to make way for the modern development with sweeping views of the Chicago skyline, but the builders maintained the façade of the old Town Hall entrance — a reminder of the complicated past.

"It is very powerful to know we are reclaiming history," Valle says. "We are creating something beautiful with it."