SAFE AT HOME
This LGBTQ-friendly seniors building is a ‘dream come true’ for residents — and a model for affordable housing in other cities
After nearly three years of waiting and with their financial security waning, Suz Atlas and her partner, Mary Groce, finally moved from Camden, N.J., to the John C. Anderson Apartments in Philadelphia’s Center City on May 1, 2017.
“We couldn’t get here fast enough,” said Ms. Atlas, 79, a retired massage therapist. “We don’t know where else we would have gone.”
One of the first LGBTQfriendly senior housing facilities in the United States, the John C. Anderson Apartments — named for the path-breaking Black and gay City Council member who died in 1983 — has been called home by nearly 100 people since it opened in 2014. The 56-unit, sixstory structure was constructed for $19.2 million.
“There’s a need for affordable housing where LGBTQ seniors can feel safe and can be among their peers,” said Charles Carroll, property manager of an apartment complex known to many as the JCAA.
With its lush courtyard garden, community partnerships, extensive services and 200-person waitlist, the JCAA has become a model for LGBTQfriendly, subsidized housing for seniors. Similar projects are under discussion, in construction or open in New York, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati and other cities.
“The Anderson Apartments were at the forefront, and we showcase them,” said Sydney Kopp-Richardson, director of the National LGBTQ+ Elder Housing Initiative. The initiative is run by SAGE, a New York nonprofit founded in 1978 that has developed subsidized rental buildings for seniors in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
SAGE estimates that the population of LGBTQ seniors in the United States will reach 7 million by 2030. The oldest members of this population are more likely than their younger peers to have faced discrimination in employment and housing, and were young adults decades before same-sex relationships were afforded the economic and other advantages of civil marriage.
To be eligible for a JCAA apartment, a prospective tenant must be at least 62 years old and have a gross annual income of no more than $44,280, or $50,640 for a couple. Federal housing choice vouchers — also known as Section 8 — are accepted, as well.
About 30 LGBTQ-friendly affordable-housing projects are
open or in some stage of development nationwide, Ms. Kopp-Richardson said.
‘Better care of our elders’
Located around the corner from the William Way Community Center, the JCAA stands in the heart of Philly’s Gayborhood, which for much of the 20th century was the residential and social hub of the region’s LGBTQ community. But gentrification and redevelopment have diluted the queer presence.
“I was aging, and I saw my brothers and sisters aging in Gayborhoods they helped create and then, as the neighborhoods got fancy, having to move out,” said Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. “I felt our community needed to take better care of our elders.”
Mr. Segal found support for his mission among political and community leaders in the city, in Harrisburg and in Washington, D.C. And at a social event in 2011, he had a conversation about the need for affordable senior housing in Philly with an official of Pennrose, the Philadelphia real estate development and management company.
“At the time, there was only one other [LGBTQfriendly senior] project in the nation, and that was in L.A. and was developed differently,” said Mr. Segal, 71.
Pennrose went on to develop the project in partnership with the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund, a Philly nonprofit Mr. Segal helped establish in 2005. The fund is named for the German physician and gay rights advocate whose research institute in Berlin was ransacked and closed by the Nazis.
Construction was financed with low-income housing tax credits, the cornerstone of affordable housing. The credits were created by a 1986 federal law to encourage private investment in such projects.
“LGBTQ-friendly housing is not set aside for LGBTQ people only, but it does create a friendly and welcoming environment for those in the community and their allies,” said Jacob Fisher, who helped shepherd the Anderson project and is regional vice president of Pennrose.
Communal spirit
At the JCCA, the progressive and communal spirit of the Gayborhood of the 1970s and ’80s is alive and well.
They include longtime activists with Radicalesbians, ACT-UP and other organizations, as well as veterans of Stonewall, the 1969 New York City uprising widely seen as launching the contemporary gay rights movement.
John S. James moved into the JCAA within weeks of its opening. He was among the pioneers marching for gay rights in front of Independence Hall in 1965 — one of the first such demonstrations in the United States.
“At that time the official [federal] policy was that any homosexual would be fired, and I was a computer programmer at the National Institutes of Health,” said Mr. James, 81, who continues to write and publish essays about social justice issues.
“We didn’t know what was
going to happen at the [1965] demonstration,” he said. “We were afraid there was going to be violence. But I thought it was important to be there.”
Elizabeth Coffey Williams, a transgender woman and actress who appeared in films by John Waters — including his iconic “Pink Flamingos” — was on the verge of homelessness when she moved into the JCAA in 2014.
“Fifty years ago, there was a very familial atmosphere in the community, and I think that has carried forth at the JCAA,” Ms. Coffey Williams said. “It never occurred to me to be invisible. I found my safety living in plain sight.”
‘A dream come true’
The greater visibility of LGBTQpeople notwithstanding, misperceptions of the community as generally affluent persist. Seniors in their 70s and 80s — “the first ‘out’ generation,” Mr. Segal said — came of age decades before anti-gay employment discrimination was outlawed and the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the right to samesex marriage.
“As we worked with Mark and the community, we looked at the data on [LGBTQ
seniors] and the demand and need, for affordable housing — especially for that first ‘out’ generation,” said Pennrose president Timothy Henkel.
The company is working on similar housing projects in Cincinnati and New Haven, Conn. An initiative in Denver for homeless LGBTQ youth is also in the works.
Pennrose also is renovating a middle school in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood as the Pryde, an LGBTQ-friendly, affordable senior housing complex.
Ground was broken in June. Then, in July, signs around the site were defaced with threats of violence. The wider community responded with expressions of solidarity, but the incident serves as a reminder that prejudice against LGBTQ people endures, Mr. Henkel said.
Mr. Carroll, the JCAA property manager, said the Boston incident underscores the vulnerability of the community’s elder citizens. “While it would be nice to think that someday we’ll all live in perfect harmony, as LGBTQ people age, they need to live somewhere they can feel safe,” he said.