More retirement communities for LGBTQ+ older adults are coming online, but developers need to step up their efforts to address the needs of members of the “silver rainbow,” according to an AARP article.
“I think because of culture shift and visibility, people are seeing that LGBTQ+ people are aging in need of culturally responsive, affirming housing,” Sydney Kopp-Richardson, director of the National LGBTQ+ Elder Housing Initiative at LGBTQ+ elder advocacy group SAGE, told the AARP.
SAGE estimates that by 2030, approximately 7 million LGBTQ+ Americans will be aged 50 or more years.
“Decades of discrimination have impacted LGBTQ+ elders,” Kopp-Richardson said, adding that memories of stigma and rejection can send them back into the closet in their retirement years in traditional long-term care settings.
A 2018 study by the AARP found that worries about potential neglect, abuse, access to services and harassment in assisted living communities and other long-term care settings are common among LGBTQ+ individuals. And a 2021 study by Rush University Medical Center researchers and published in the journal Clinical Gerontologist also found that LGBTQ+ individuals fear discrimination.
Affordable housing appears to be a growing focus of development for LGBTQ+ older adults. According to data from SAGE, 31 LGBTQ-friendly affordable housing complexes are in operation or in development across 14 states and Washington, DC.
For example, the former William Barton Rogers Middle School in Hyde Park, MA, is being repurposed as Boston’s — and all of New England’s — first affordable housing community specifically for LGBTQ+ older adults.
“They’re much, much less likely than other older adults to have family, community, church support,” LGBTQ Senior Housing Executive Director Gretchen Van Ness said previously. “So having a place to go that’s affordable and welcoming, where they can live their authentic lives, is critical for their safety and health and well-being.”
The not-for-profit formed in 2018 explicitly to facilitate access to affordable and welcoming housing for LGBTQ older adults, Van Ness previously told the McKnight’s Business Daily. She said she believes that the community will serve as a model nationwide.
The Pryde of Hyde Park project began in 2022, and the first residents are expected to move in this month, according to AARP.
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