Liberation Begins at Home: Creating LGBTQ+ Friendly Housing

Spirit on Lake was only the second LGBTQ+ friendly senior housing development in the U.S. Photo courtesy of PRG, Inc.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to live in peace and security, expressing fully who they are. But LGBTQ+ individuals face discrimination as home buyers, as renters, in the workplace, and when seeking health care, in addition to higher rates of homelessness and trauma. The U.S. has a long history of violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and with a recent rise in emboldened rhetoric, violent attacks, and discriminatory laws and policies, it is urgent to the well-being of millions of people to assure their safety and assert their right to exist.

Intersections of LGBTQ+ liberation and community development

In the face of this longstanding violence, LGBTQ+ people have a powerful legacy of organizing and cooperation to support each other and establish affirming housing, community centers, small businesses, and more. Community development practitioners have a role to play in supporting these efforts toward LGBTQ+ liberation, which are intertwined with movements for racial, economic, and gender justice. We spoke to three organizations that have been at the forefront of creating affordable LGBTQ+-friendly housing where people can live in safety and dignity. In these cases, LGBTQ+ organizations that were not housing developers saw housing needs among the people they work with, particularly senior housing and transitional housing for youth who have experienced homelessness, and they stepped into a gap to address those needs. Their ability to partner with community developers and housing organizations helped make these projects work.

The Projects

“We have to promote bravery and solidarity” - The Jasmine Alexander Housing Program

Brave Space Alliance in Chicago, Illinois

Brave Space Alliance (BSA) is the first Black-led and trans-led LGBTQ+ center in Chicago’s South Side. The organization provides affirming and culturally competent assistance, including health and wellness resources, food access, and financial assistance to all LGBTQ+ people, with a focus on BIPOC trans and gender-non-conforming people as the most impacted by violence and economic oppression within LGBTQ+ communities. BSA’s work is grounded in a mutual aid framework that emphasizes the principles of bravery and solidarity, and the power of BIPOC LGBTQ+ people to sustain themselves when given access to resources and skills needed to ensure they create a life of their choosing.  BSA offers the Jasmine Alexander Housing Program, a transitional housing program for BIPOC trans individuals experiencing homelessness or housing instability. In addition to housing, the program includes an empowerment initiative, Transcendence, which provides residents with resources, skill-building, and education designed to help them live independently and maintain stable housing once they complete the 18-month program. BSA Chief Development Officer Stephanie Skora explains that, while it is not possible to guarantee safety for BIPOC LGBTQ+ people in the face of ongoing oppression and violence, it can make a difference in people’s well-being to live in a community, noting, “LGBT people experience less violence when they are in robust and supportive communities.”

“We have big dreams and big goals” – Legacy House

OutFront Kalamazoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan

OutFront Kalamazoo is the second-largest LGBTQ+ center in Michigan, offering programming, resources and services, and hosting events. After focusing primarily on community programs and services for more than 30 years, OutFront Kalamazoo recently opened Legacy House, a transitional home for six young adults ages 18-24, in response to overwhelming need. As in BSA’S program, Legacy House provides wraparound services to prepare residents who may not have experienced stable housing to live on their own. Residents will live in Legacy House for up to 24 months, learning from staff how to how to cook, shop, do laundry, and otherwise live independently.

OutFront Kalamazoo also operates a “Host Homes” program, a youth-led program in which volunteer LGBTQ+ or demonstrated ally families with extra space take in youth ages 13-18 for up to six months as they determine their next steps. “We would like to continue and do permanent housing, for young and old,” said OutFront Kalamazoo Executive Director Tracy Hall. “The demand is there. We don’t have enough room for the demand.”

“It has been a really challenged, but really victorious, project” – Spirit on Lake Apartments

PRG and Spirit of the Lakes United Church of Christ in Minneapolis, Minnesota

In Minneapolis in the early 2000s, LGBTQ+-friendly Spirit of the Lakes Church of Christ wondered how it could best use its property along busy Lake Street. Church member and (now retired) faith work consultant to the National LGBTQ Task Force and transgender activist Barbara Satin, then in her 70s, had co-founded GLBT Generations, an advocacy and support organization focused on the needs of LGBTQ+ seniors. Satin and the church wanted to address the need for safe and accepting housing for aging members of the LGBTQ+ community—who are disproportionately likely to experience housing insecurity and discrimination compared to non-LGBTQ+ elders—but did not know where to start. Enter PRG, Inc., a nonprofit housing developer looking for opportunities along Lake Street. Together they created Spirit on Lake, a 46-unit building providing affordable and welcoming housing for LGBTQ+ seniors and other residents that opened in 2014. It took several years to get the development funded and completed, but the result was the second LGBTQ+ oriented affordable senior development in the country, providing a model for other groups to follow.

Common Threads

Unique challenges require patience, flexibility, and creativity

Fair housing laws prohibit owners from discriminating against potential tenants on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. However, that also prevents owners from limiting the population of a building based on those factors, which makes it challenging to create projects specifically for LGBTQ+ residents. Some organizations, like PRG, rely on affirmatively marketing the property to the LGBTQ+ community while not discriminating against others who may happen to apply.  BSA finds this a difficult line to tread, however, concerned that allowing non-trans residents to live in the building “would jeopardize the safety of residents and the community we are trying to build,” Skora said. “It’s a very unique barrier.”

It can be challenging to line up the necessary capital. PRG initially conceived of Spirit on Lake as a mixed-income co-op and applied for state housing finance agency funding for senior housing. PRG Executive Director Kathy Wetzel-Mastel said the organization was denied state funding three or four times. “It was like playing whack-a-mole. Each time we got denied, we addressed the reason for it and then the next year was another objection. I think really the issue was the LGBTQ focus.” By the time the project received a funding award, the 2008 financial crisis was underway and the numbers no longer worked, because LGBTQ+ elders who had planned to sell their homes and use the proceeds to move into the new cooperative had seen their home values plummet. PRG had to pivot away from the co-op structure to do the project as affordable rental using Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC).

Because the funding is not as straightforward, these projects can take longer than usual to achieve. Spirit on Lake took nine years from concept to occupancy, and OutFront Kalamazoo’s Legacy House took six years. Patience and resilience are required. The practitioners we spoke to also mentioned the need for more philanthropic and direct public support for projects supporting LGBTQ+ populations.

Staffing and program needs may also differ from traditional supportive housing. Service providers must have specialized understanding of LGBTQ+ communities’ issues and needs, and the differing needs within different segments of the population, such as seniors versus trans youth. BSA’s Skora said their program needed some staffers who are part of the community and some who aren’t. She said BSA conducted a survey that found “when you talk about therapy for trans people, some won’t talk to anyone who doesn’t share their experiences. Others would rather not talk to someone like that.” Tracy Hall said OutFront Kalamazoo needed to add to its complement of staff to manage Legacy House, resulting in “a little sticker shock for board members at 2023 budget.”

It’s more than just housing

An apartment building renting to LGBTQ+ individuals without focused, relevant programming, is still just an apartment building. The young residents of BSA’s and OutFront Kalamazoo’s programs, for example, need more than just a roof over their heads. Skora explained, “We have seen so many youth programs that fail to prepare kids for life outside the program. They have no idea how to live on their own. If all you are providing is housing, you are not going to house that person successfully. They’re not going to gain independence or address various structural issues in their lives.” BSA and OutFront Kalamazoo therefore offer a carefully planned array of services that help prepare residents to live successfully on their own. “The goal is when they leave, they have a savings account, a job, a GED or they’re in school, and they are able to function on their own and have a stable lifestyle,” said Hall.

Even more important than providing services is building intentional community among residents. “With housing in particular, what we are solving for is community,“ said BSA’s Skora. Developers and even nonprofit property owners may sometimes overlook the community building aspect of property operations, but it is especially important for properties housing LGBTQ+ residents, many of whom have had adverse experiences with their families and communities of origin. “People with a supportive and affirming community to lean on have better outcomes,” Skora noted, even in the absence of family support.

Before the development of Spirit on Lake, GLBT Generations conducted a survey that found LGBTQ+ seniors were very interested in aging in place in a community that was safe and supportive of who they were. PRG and Spirit of the Lakes church worked hard to create that supportive community, marketing the building at Pride events and recruiting Quatrefoil Library, a resource and community center for the queer community, to inhabit the building’s ground floor. Although fair housing laws require housing to be open to anyone, Spirit on Lake was successful in attracting many LGBTQ+ applicants through affirmative marketing, and when the doors opened in 2014, about two-thirds of residents were LGBTQ+. Because living alongside non-LGBTQ+ people can present real safety concerns for LGBTQ+ people, who are more likely to face harassment and violence than non-LGBTQ+ people, having skilled property managers and support staff with a deep understanding of these concerns and experience building community and effectively managing conflicts is critical for LGBTQ+-focused housing projects. In the case of Spirit on Lake, a building manager worked hard to build relationships between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ residents, and though there have been some bumps in the road, the community building efforts have been very successful. Ten years on, Spirit is still primarily a LGBTQ+ building and still very multicultural.

The right building management is critical to community building success, and that commitment needs to be consistent over time. Knowing that LIHTC housing was not its strength, PRG at first recruited an experienced, for-profit partner with more experience to handle building operations. After several years, that partner wanted to exit and planned to turn over operations to another for-profit. Wetzel-Mastel and Satin knew that the success of Spirit on Lake’s community was heavily dependent on building management that was committed to the LGBTQ+ community and would see the job as building a community in the project, not just managing 46 units of housing. “We could have found ourselves quickly losing our sense of identity as a place where LGBT seniors can live out their lives with security and respect,” said Satin. Fortunately, PRG was able to transfer management of the project to a nonprofit that understood the importance of building and preserving intentional community among residents.

It requires partners that are part of the community you’re serving

Strong partnerships are important in nearly every aspect of community development, but there are additional nuances when working with marginalized communities. Skora suggests anyone interested in doing this type of work ask themselves two questions: “Do you belong to community you are trying to serve? If not, do you have key stakeholders and decisionmakers who belong to that community? If the answer is no, this might not be the right community for you to develop.” She goes on to explain that even with the best intentions, developers who are not rooted in the communities they are trying to serve can do more harm than good. They may have trouble getting the necessary buy-in from the community, planning culturally competent projects and services, and executing interventions effectively.  “Whenever you’re trying to serve any community, you need to be a part of that community or have people with power in your structure who are,” she said. Kathy Wetzel-Mastel agrees: “I would be highly suspect of any developer that is not part of the LGBTQ community wanting to do a project like this.”

This does not mean “traditional” community development practitioners don’t have a role to play. Far from it. Many LGBTQ+-serving organizations have expertise in building community power and providing services to address the issues facing their communities, but little to no experience in real estate development and property management. Wetzel-Mastel suggests having the LGBTQ+ organization focus on “the nuts and bolts of programming” and find a nonprofit developer with the right experience to focus on the funding and the project.

OutFront Kalamazoo lacked housing expertise on its own staff, so it worked with partners including LISC, county government, and the public housing commission to fulfill its vision for creating Legacy House. And the importance of collaboration did not end there. The youth staying in Legacy House have multifaceted needs, so, “We have given a lot of thought to the services we provide the residents,” Hall explained. She relies on community partnerships with other organizations that have the skill sets meet them, including a community mental health organization that handles case management, a therapy collective specifically focused on Black and brown clients, the local YWCA, and the LISC Kalamazoo office, which provides a financial literacy workshop for residents.

Community buy-in is also key to success. Hall recommends seeking as many community partners as possible to collaborate on this work. OutFront Kalamazoo was fortunate in that “people were genuinely excited about this project and couldn’t wait to get it off the ground.” The former housing commission chair made it the last project he worked on, Hall said. “It’s really been a community endeavor.” This support and solidarity has been especially important as, like most LGBTQ+ centers, OutFront Kalamazoo has received a dramatic increase in harassment and threats from anti-LGBTQ+ extremists over the past several years.

Spirit on Lake faced significant challenges, but the local community helped PRG and Spirit of the Lakes church overcome them. When they made the decision to switch from co-op to rental, PRG and the church team spoke to the nearby neighborhood councils in Phillips, Midtown, and Powderhorn. The councils generally were not in favor of additional rental housing in an area that already had a low owner-occupancy rate, but they felt the focus of the Spirit project was so important to the community that they were very supportive of the deal. In fact, at least one council donated money to the project. Satin reported, “It was not ‘not in my backyard;’ it was ‘yes in my backyard.’ That was the beginning of a whole new creation. [Now], we are a few months away from celebrating our 10th anniversary, and it’s just amazing to see.”

Read about more projects and programs that preserve affirming spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals:

• LISC Bay Area partner LYRIC operates a community center in San Francisco that serves queer and trans youth of color. 
• LISC Chicago supported a LGBTQ+ senior housing development, Town Hall Apartments.
• LISC Los Angeles provided an acquisition loan to TransLatin@ Coalition’s new Empowerment Center, which will offer multiple social supportive services specifically designed for trans, gender non-confirming, and intersex transitional age youth.

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