This article appears in the January/February 2023 print issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.
As the United States moves into a new era of post marriage equality, many of the leaders of that movement are now setting their sights to the next call to action: housing equality, specifically for LGBTQ older adults who fear being discriminated in their final chapters of life.
Since the 2007 opening of Triangle Square in Los Angeles, the nation’s first affordable LGBTQ-friendly senior housing residence, there has been a growing movement across the country to develop similar projects. Sydney Kopp-Richardson, director of National LGBT Elder Housing Initiative at SAGE (Advocacy and Services for LGBTQ+ Elders) says, “There are approximately 17 LGBTQ+ affirming affordable senior rental housing residences that are currently open. That doesn’t include other models like collectives, or market-rate luxury housing. That number also doesn’t include those in any phase of the planning or development process like the The Pryde in Boston’s Hyde Park.
It isn’t surprising that most of those 17 residences are in major cities like Boston and Chicago (another city to look to for examples of success on the LGBTQ+ housing front). But it may surprise some that the list will soon grow to include a new building of 60 LGBTQ friendly affordable units in Portland, Maine.
Pine Tree proud
It turns out that for years the Pine Tree State has been steadily working on this movement since the primary work of Equality Maine ended on Election Day 2012, when Maine became the first state to win the freedom to marry without legislative or court approval and the first state to bring marriage directly to its voters through a ballot initiative. After that time, Equality Maine began to address the needs of other vulnerable parts of the LGBTQ community, including youth and elders.
One of the leaders in this movement is John Hennessy who is a board member of Equality Maine and a cofounder of SAGE Maine, an affiliate of the National SAGE organization. Hennessy saw how expensive it is to live in the Portland area. That, along with the scarcity of affordable housing, started driving many older LGBTQ adults further away from the community and access to aging resources. Hennessy and SAGE Maine started doing extensive cultural competency trainings for senior residences and long-term care facilities around the state. They also started offering the trainings to the state elder service providers focused on home care like Southern Maine Agency on Aging.
These trainings are having a major effect by increasing the options available for LGBTQ older adults in Maine.
One such building is The Park Danforth, a nonprofit senior residence in Portland. Of their 216 units, 70 are HUD-subsidized for low income, 36 units are assisted living and the rest are market rate. “Since the LGBTQ training, we have seen a steady increase in LGBTQ adults coming to tour and move in. We now have close to 10 percent of our residents who identify as LGBTQ along with two members of our senior staff,” said Albert L’Etoile, director of sales and marketing at Park Danforth. “It makes me so happy when I hear that people here report feeling safe and comfortable, which is how it should be everywhere.” L’Etoile said that they “don’t do any specific LGBTQ programming but the staff is a strong presence in Portland’s Pride parade and festival. We do have a big Rainbow Day event in the building every year during Pride month.”
Doing the hard work
Recently, a case in Maine received national attention when a long-term care facility in Jonesport, Maine denied a room to a woman when they realized she was transgender. GLAD Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) sued Adult Family Care Homes (AFCH) of Maine. Part of the landmark settlement mandated that the staff in all of their nine facilities across the state must receive LGBTQ cultural competency training. Prior to the case, Hennessy said that many facilities declined these trainings due to costs or scheduling conflicts, “but after the ruling, the floodgates opened and everyone wanted this training to avoid similar lawsuits.”
Another major player in the Maine LGBTQ senior housing initiative is Dale McCormick who was the first openly gay member of the Maine state legislature. McCormick served three terms in the state Senate (1990–1996), then served as state treasurer until 2005 when she was appointed by Governor Baldacci to be the director of the state housing authority.
McCormick has invaluable connections and experience; ironically, she began as a carpenter, then a contractor. With her connections in the housing field and financing, she saw the opportunity with the money that the Biden administration was putting into HUD toward housing, plus Maine’s low-income tax credits, to focus on opportunities to create LGBTQ-friendly housing. McCormick also recognized that Maine was facing a severe shortage of affordable housing, so whatever project she aligned with needed to be affordable.
Eventually, Hennessy and McCormick started planning with Ed Gardner, owner of Gardner Real Estate Group, who has always been a supporter of the LGBTQ community. Shortly after the passage of marriage equality in Maine, Gardner and Betsy Smith, Equality Maine’s director, and another friend, Richard Waitzkin, a Portland psychotherapist, began conversations about what the community should focus on next. Gardener, who also had a home in Ft. Lauderdale, envied that community’s Pride Center. It was a focal point for the LGBTQ community in Ft. Lauderdale, and there wasn’t an LGBTQ community center anywhere in Maine, or New England for that matter.
Gardner graciously converted the building where his real estate office was located into a space that would house six other LGBTQ organizations like Hennessy’s SAGE Maine as well as Equality Maine and Maine Trans Net—dramatically subsidizing their rent well below market rate. “We first wanted to see how this idea would work, bringing these LGBTQ groups under one roof and holding weekly tenant meetings to hear what the groups were working on and what their needs were,” said Gardner. “About the time we realized the potential to turn this into an LGBTQ community center, the building next door, Maine Savings Bank, became available.
They purchased the building and began renovations to turn the property into the Equality Center, Maine’s first LGBTQ Community Center.
A big plan
Like McCormick and Hennessy, Gardner was also acutely aware of the shortage of affordable housing in Maine and the skyrocketing costs of living in the Portland area. He realized the urgency to create affordable housing that would be specifically welcoming for LGBTQ older adults. Initially, the plan was to add some residences to the Equality Community Center, which opened in June 2022, but he realized that if he donated the parking lot to his office, he could build an entire six-story building with 50–60 units of affordable housing. The next goal would be to identify a developer who shared the same vision.
Over the years, Gardner was impressed with the work of one developer, Kevin Bunker, who was becoming known for his work in developing affordable senior residences, and Bunker was thrilled to be a part of this project. They anticipate breaking ground in 2024 and after a one-year-build, they hope to open their doors in early 2025. Because they need to follow fair housing guidelines around discrimination, the proposed building will be open and inclusive for all adults over 55, but they will be very clear in their marketing that this is a welcoming residence for LGBTQ older adults.
“Since the demand for this type of housing is so high, we expect LGBTQ older adults to start coming out of the woodwork across Maine for this opportunity to live in Portland surrounded by a vibrant diverse community and access to aging resources,” said Gardner. “But most importantly, they want to live in a building where they don’t need to hide their authentic selves and live with other LGBTQ people and allies.”
Shortly after the opening of the Equality Community Center in June 2022, SAGE USA made the decision to remove its name-branding from their national affiliates. “If it hadn’t been for the Equality Community Center, we would have gone under, but we have now become our own independent organization called Equality Maine: Network for Older Adults, Hennessy stated.
About this major shift from SAGE, Reynaldo Mireles, Jr., SAGE’s director of coalition building, said, “As part of our new strategic direction, SAGE is changing its current affiliate model in response to local leadership and community feedback. We know that the work our partners do in local communities directly impacts the lives of LGBTQ+ elders in ways that are unique to their community’s needs. Rather than following a one-size-fits-all approach under our previous affiliate model, SAGE’s flexible collaboration structure promotes partnerships that reflect unique local interests.”
More options needed
McCormick and Gardner both understand that this one building will not meet the demands of the affordable housing crisis in Maine. And so they’re already looking at their next project. “We hope to start exploring a new affordable housing building that will include an intergenerational component so people can age together across the generations,” added Gardner.
Many leaders in the LGBTQ Aging and Housing industry recognize the necessity of a three-pronged approach to LGBTQ Senior Housing options. If you visualize this as a pyramid, the small section at the very top represents these new residences that are built from the start and marketed as “LGBTQ friendly.” The middle section represents the training required to make all the existing senior housing and long-term care facilities safe and welcoming for LGBTQ older adults. The largest section, the base, which affects the greatest number of people is the work to make the home care network culturally competent to service the needs of LGBTQ elders who choose to age in place in their own homes or apartments.
Leaders like Hennessy, McCormick and Gardner are working hard to ensure that all these areas are being addressed. In 2008, Maine changed the slogan that greets you as you cross into the state from “Vacationland” to “Maine: The Way Life Should Be.” Thanks to the work of these three and their countless colleagues, the new slogan rings true for all of us in the LGBTQ community; this really is a model of inclusion that is the way life should be.
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