Denise Samen, 65-year-old military veteran, is delighted to move into John C. Anderson, a Philadelphia rent-subsidized apartment building for older adults. About 90 percent of the people there are LGBT, and, as she says, “You don’t have to explain yourself. Like herself, many of her neighbors are LGBT activists, going back to the time of the Stonewall riots. With a waiting list of 85, the facility is the third government-subsidized low- to moderate-income housing project for older adults that specifically welcomes LGBT people. The other two are Triangle Square (Los Angeles) and Spirit on Lake (Minneapolis). Within the next year, others will open in Chicago, San Francisco, and another in LA.
A recent study from the Equal Rights Center (Washington), almost half the same-sex couples calling senior living facilities in ten states faced such discrimination as not learning about vacant apartments openly available to straight couples. The collapse of the real estate market caused the failure of about two dozen planned market-rate retirement communities. Opened in 2006, Rainbow Vision (Santa Fe, NM) declared bankruptcy three years ago and is reorganized for a general older-adult population. The only continuing care LGBT community is Fountain Grove Lodge (Santa Rosa, CA) which charges from $3,395 to $5,125 a month. At the Anderson apartments, the allowable income for a couple is $38,040; they pay on a sliding scale from from $192 to $786 monthly.
The developer of the Anderson apartments, Mark Segal, is known as helping to found the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Youth. Although he cannot legally discriminate against straight residents, he has promoted the facility at LGBT community centers and through ads in LGBT media.
