With an eye toward the future, the Cambridge City Council has voted to explore past efforts to create LGBTQ-friendly housing for seniors and come up with a better plan.
According to the Cambridge Chronicle-Tab, the vote charges City Manager Louis DePasquale and other city officials to draft a report that focuses on what got in the way of the city’s efforts over the past decade and recommend solutions to get the job done. This fresh effort also has the support of Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui.
“[T]here is very much a need and a desire to create the kind of housing that can indeed cultivate the community aspect of the LGBTQ community,” City Councilor Denise Simmons told the Chronicle-Tab. Simmons had previously served as the city’s first openly lesbian mayor (in 2008–’09 and again in 2016–’17).
“This is something that other communities have managed to crack the code on, and if Cambridge cannot be leading the charge, I want us to at least be a part of the overall effort,” she said.
Said fellow City Councilor Quinton Zondervan, “LGBT seniors are impacted by decades of oppression and face a unique set of challenges including disrupted connection to families of origin, discrimination, isolation, and less opportunity to age in a social and economically secure location. And these challenges and more put this population at greater risk for health problems, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and more.
“All of this is especially compounded to LGBT seniors of color, as well as those who identify as trans or bisexual,” said Zondervan.
Read the complete Cambridge Chronicle-Tab story here.
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