The good and bad news about housing for LGBTQ Americans
It’s been a particularly difficult time for Dianne Karon, a 65-year-old transgender woman, as the political vitriol aimed at queer and trans people has escalated.
Despite this, Karon says she still feels lucky because she has safe and secure housing after landing a spot in Stonewall House, a Brooklyn LGBTQ-friendly senior housing development that opened in 2019. Like many queer and trans people, she has struggled to find permanent housing, and having served time in prison certainly didn’t make things easier.
“I would be living on the streets if it wasn’t for [Stonewall House],” Karon said. “It is the best, and I don’t have to hide myself.”
LGBTQ individuals have long faced difficulties finding and maintaining stable housing. Studies have found housing providers favor heterosexual couples over same-sex partners and provide transgender applicants fewer options than cis applicants when they disclose their gender status. Housing searches can be particularly challenging for the roughly 3 million LGBTQ adults over the age of 50, who grew up in a time when being open about one’s identity was far less accepted. And LGBTQ people have had little redress; while housing discrimination based on traits like race and disability status is banned under the Fair Housing Act, a landmark civil rights statute passed 54 years ago, sexual orientation and gender identity weren’t protected until 2021.
It’s a huge shift for the LGBTQ community, though experts say there’s a long way to go before these new rights reach those they’re meant to protect. To get there will require building trust among LGBTQ individuals that their concerns will be taken seriously, and standing up sustained and proactive training and enforcement for all the many gatekeepers involved in the housing market. The government’s track record in these areas is far less than perfect.
Implementation matters because policy changes alone aren’t enough to change behavior. And places like Karon’s Stonewall House, named for the 1969 Stonewall uprising often cited as a turning point for the modern LGBTQ movement, aren’t sufficient. Though it’s one of a handful of queer-friendly federally subsidized housing complexes across the country, experts recognize there will never be enough of those sorts of units to address the need, plus not all LGBTQ people want to live in those communities.
https://www.vox.com/23046516/trans-lgbtq-housing-affordable-rent