Housing.

It is something that we all need but for many trans people it is something hard to find for many reasons, for many trans people they can’t find a job no matter how long they search. For other trans people they are just plain and simply discriminated against. I know of one trans person whose landlord just out and told her that she is making the other tenants uncomfortable so he kicked her out.

Capitol Hill Housing shares LGBTQ-affirming senior housing vision
Generations Aging with Pride to provide services at complex slated to open in 2020
Capitol Hill Times
By Brandon Macz
9/22/2017


Andy Post spent his summer interviewing more than 100 LGBTQ seniors and advocates, helping to create the framework for Capitol Hill Housing’s [this Capitol Hill is in Seattle] latest development project.

CHH is planning to construct a seven-story LGBTQ-affirming senior housing complex in the parking lot next to its Helen V Apartments at 14th Avenue and East Union Street. Plans are to create 44-66 affordable housing units, and to renovate the Helen V. The first floor of the new development will include around 4,000 square feet of commercial space.

“This is needed and important housing, and it is about time,” said Capitol Hill Housing CEO Chris Persons during a presentation of the project at Gay City on Thursday, Sept. 21, “especially in light of the attack and beating of a transgender woman just up the street at Rancho Bravo a night or two ago, and in light of the horrible shooting of Scott Schultz at Georgia Tech. We know painfully that our struggle against intolerance is not over.”

They also plan on tying in healthcare with the housing program,

Virginia Mason rheumatologist Amish J. Dave told the Capitol Hill Times he serves on the steering committee for the project, and that for a long time the medical center has been looking for ways to better serve LGBTQ patients. That includes improved care for transgender people, he said.

Once the LGBTQ-affirming senior housing development opens to residents, on-site health programs and services will be provided by Generations Aging with Pride, a nonprofit focused on multigenerational solutions to challenges facing older LGBTQ adults.

Let’s face it, we are all getting older and as we age we find that healthcare becomes a larger part of our life so to find healthcare where you live is fantastic especially when you don’t need assisted living but you only need doctors who are knowledgeable about trans patients.

I know a number of people have looked into trans housing and LGBT housing here in Connecticut and one of the thing that they found is that we have a small population base and also we are spread out in the suburbs and also we like our impendence which makes it harder to have senior housing dedicated to LGBT seniors.

I was at one of those retirement villages last week and they have a LGBT organizations as part of their village groups. But the thing about that is that these retirement communities most of the time are for upper middle class to way beyond middle class. One place in West Hartford, Bloomfield area that I did training a couple of years required you to be very wealthy (I think you had to have a net worth of at least a million dollars). My little Prius looked very small there besides the Cadillacs, and Lincolns.

In town there are a couple of low income senior communities with a long waiting list and we also have a number of middle income senior communities. But none of them are specifically for LGBT seniors and I have to wonder if we would be marginalized there.