Retirement village offers safe haven for LGBTQ seniors

Interesting concept, though I wonder how long this will last.

r1 Well I think it will last as long for seniors who grew up in more homophobic times. So older gen xers who retire might like this too. By the time millennials retire such a space will be less needed.

There are several of these types of places around the country. Here's an upscale one in Santa Rosa, CA.

It because their peers are so homophobic. Imagine living in a retirement community with a bunch of 80 years olds who still say "faggot". Horrible.

R2, homophobia, like racism, will always be with us.

20th Century optimists predicted racism and bigotry would wane though attrition as the haters died off. Instead, those racists have been replaced by their better-equipped descendants now armed with social media access and blatant political and religious support.

Homophoba "ain't going nowhere," and the need for supportive, gay senior living communities will only grow. Good on them.

Sounds like a nightmare.

Most gay groups and communities can’t keep a Pride committee together. Can you imagine the eventual drama of an entire gay neighborhood? Especially one with an HOA? Jesus the very thought of it sends chills down my spine. And that’s not even considering what happens when the elder trans’ show up! And the pride flags everywhere would irritate the shit outta me.

Well R7, places like this don't need your tiresome ass living there. You can always retire at The Villages where you can hobnob with FL trash.

Of course, they don't actually want you either.

There are already assisted living LGBTQ places in Palm Springs and Fort Lauderdale.

There’s money to be made from an LGBTQ population with disposable income not wasted on grandkids.

Palm Springs IS an "assisted living LGBTQ" place.

I've been thinking increasingly about retiring to one of these places when I retire in the next 5 years if I can afford it. Friends have either moved, died, become incapacitated or drifted away and it is increasingly apparent that I don't mean much to my family, never really did and I no longer want to keep pretending.

To R9, you have to watch any "Assisted living" places anywhere in US, Gay or Str8. People need to do their research& investigate the places financials& everything else. Lots of Medicaid, Medicare& social security fraud in these retirement places-gay or str8.

Unfortunately, the government is not going to set these places up for us. We need to do it ourselves or with private investors.

I love the concepts, especially, for those who are single and may not have anyone close enough to assist them in they latter years.

I had coffee with a former colleague last week - straight woman who is 78. She said that she will pay people to do things that she needs help with. I'm hoping financially I will be in the situation too but worry about those who don't have the means and are alone - and memory issues just make it worse.

Just my luck, I'd settle into one if these pkaces and my neighbor would be one of DL's numerous anti-trans trolls constantly screaming about "drop the T."

It’s in Boston but unfortunately Hyde Park is a long way from anywhere else in Boston you’d want to be.

Nice, though.

Different people like different things, but for me it seems like an insane idea.

Why on earth would I want at 55, at 65, at 75, or older to live in barely basic little cottage with ceramic tile floors, 3 rooms and a bath (living room/kitchen + kitchen and one bath, arranged townhouse style with just four small windows, with very basic builders' grade everything, set 28 houses on 5 acres, with scruffy lawns and minimal landscaping for $418,000 and monthly fees of $521. And all this a 15 mile drive to "progressive Durham."

I don't want to live surrounded by people my age, who begin every sentence with, "well, at our age..." and sit baking in the sun on their tiny front porches in their cloying pastel houses waiting for the neighbors to pass by and talk about what color pills they take and how their doctors are barely children, like some experimental theatre played out every day until death?

I don't want to be on some scrubby bit of land 15 miles outside a city that's designed for cars. (Why are people so quick to give up their independence but cling so long to their cars, when the reverse order of things makes endlessly more sense?)

It makes no sense to me that people voluntarily remove themselves from the world in anticipation of being genuinely old and inform -- at which pointn they will have to move once more, to a place where actual care or significant services could be provided. What is the purpose of this intermediate step aside from never being more than one neighbor away from a Werther's Original?

I understand finacnially assisted housing for gay and lesbian retirees in cities, allowing them to remain in cities where they lived and called home for years or decades. Or collectives or mixed age artists, or experiments in co-housing, but this scheme seems crazy except as a way to make money.

Somebody hit a nerve R8, dear? Drink your warm milk and let the nurse tuck you back into bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.

People want peace of mind or at least want to get as close to it as possible. Little to no close friends or family in their life? They're not paying for real estate but paying to feel connected not isolated and part of something. That's priceless. So what if they'll still end up in a nursing home.

If I were worried about having my home on one-level and with neighbors meanby, I wouldn't spend $418,000 fgor a pastel painted 2 bedroom or $339,00 for a one bedroom a 15 mile drive way out in the fucking sticks where you are dependent on life at Common House or on keeping your driving game active (with only 28 houses, there will be no hourly shuttle services).

Instead I'd spend $350,000 for a one-bedroom converted factory building, with some architecture and style and better finishes, in the center of the city, in a neighborhood of converted warehouses, a few blocks from the Main Street. There are sidewalks and bike paths and the opportunity to get out and see a little more of the world than the 28 houses in your retirement village in the middle of a field out in the country. You would be near restaurants and coffee shops and parks and people outside your "intentional community", nearer to doctors and medical centers, more able to get around if you did stop driving.

Neighbors are very important, sometimes more important than friends, but just being out in the sticks stranded with 27 other households of lesbians and gays doesn't insure friendships or great neighbors, no more than being surrounded by the general population and an art school across the street insures against freindships or great neighbors. I would rather not park myslef in the middle of nowhere hoping that my gay and lesbian neighbors were agreeable sorts. I'd pay 70,000 less and lower monthly fees to be in a city with easy access to things, and in a much better looking place to live.

Friends in Sydney did it, an older couple, moving from a beautiful house in Cronulla to a gay-ish retirement community on the Gold Coast after the riots 20 years ago. One died five years after they moved and the other one, now 86, feels stuck there, 500 miles from their old lives and his old friends.

My mother is 86 1/2 and still driving around her small town but wouldn't drive long distances regularly. She gets out daily for errands or church and sees friends in town for lunch several times a week. That social interaction and independence is key to her mental health and enjoyment of her life. No fucking way I would move her a 15 mile drive into the country, just to be surrounded by 27 neighbors she may or may not even like.

86, R20? I bet he can count his old friends who are alive and functional on one finger, if he's lucky.

The LAST place I’d move to, to feel safe, would be anywhere in the Confederacy. Sweet Jaysus.

Living with “queers” sounds insufferable. Move to Portland, you’ll leave as a Republican.

The point of assisted living is not having to clean your apartment, make your meals, drive to the grocery store or plan social activities. It's also about having medical personnel on call and check-ins if you don't show up. It is not the same as a retirement community where people are assumed to be able-bodied and the common denominator is age.

Yes, R25. This bit of the pastel rainbow 15 miles outside Durham os the latter, a retirement community.

I don't want to live surround by people my own age and of the broadly same financial position, and all interested in some gay and lesbian co-housing theory. What a fucking bore. My friends are not all my age, not all gay and lesbian, not all my financial peer group, not from the same countries, not all of the same views of everything.

For me, if I were able to live out in the stocks and drive into town as needed for groceries, shopping, medical needs, and a change from gazing on those 27 other ugly cottages and the community center, I wouldn't voluntarily exile myself out to that ugly patch. I'd want to live in a real community, in the form of a town or city, not out in the middle of nothing waiting for my health to turn south so I could move to yet the next step of my grand decline. I don't see the point of surrounding myself with other retirees waiting to get sick.