DALLAS — When it comes to finding affordable housing for seniors in North Texas, LGBTQ adults face specific obstacles. While progress has been made in Texas and the rest of middle America on social acceptance of their community, stigma and prejudice still exist, and finding welcoming senior housing is a challenge. 

AARP estimates that more than 2.7 million Americans aged 50 and older identify as LGBTQ. This is the generation that persevered through the early days of the AIDS epidemic and the gay rights movement. They faced decades of discrimination in their careers, and many remain isolated from friends and family after being estranged before acceptance of LGBTQ communities became as prevalent as it is now. Transgender adults often face medical issues many senior care facilities typically have little experience handling.

Now reaching retirement age, this generation faces a dearth of LGBTQ-welcoming housing and retirement care facilities at a time when the need for affordable senior housing is on the rise. Across the state, the need for senior housing, in general, has increased. Affordable housing advocates estimate that Dallas County alone currently lacks as many as 20,000 affordable units for seniors.

What You Need To Know

  • Resource Center has launched a campaign to raise $4 million to help build an LGBTQ-welcoming senior housing center in Dallas

  • The project will cost a total of $23 million and will include 84 units of housing for seniors who identify as LGBTQ

  • Resource Center says the housing center is needed as seniors in the LGBTQ community still face discrimination when searching for affordable housing

To address the specific senior housing concerts of the LGBTQ community, Resource Center of North Texas has launched a $4 million capital fundraising campaign to build LGBTQ-friendly affordable senior housing in Dallas. The funds raised will contribute to a $23 million project to build an 84-unit building in Dallas’ Oak Lawn neighborhood. 

The capital campaign has already raised just over $1 million since June, including a $150,000 donation from Stephen Tosha and Stephen Stracansky, two of Resource Center’s long-standing donors, said Jennifer Collins, the senior marketing and communications manager at Resource Center. The project has already secured federal and state grants for the project’s construction.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the urgent need for helping the aging LGBTQ community secure affordable housing.

“In the wake of COVID-19, the need to address health and economic disparity is even more urgent,” Cece Cox, the chief executive officer at the Resource Center, wrote in a press release last week. “ With a global pandemic exacerbating the issues already faced by this population, a safe and affordable housing project is needed now more than ever.”

Elders tend to self-isolate, and the older LGBTQ community members often face more isolation because of social stigmas, Collins said. “It takes a lot of education to break society's stigmas, but the need is now. We can’t wait,” she said.

Resource Center has partnered with Matthews Southwest to develop the property north of Inwood Road in Oak Lawn for the project. Oak Lawn, located just north of downtown Dallas, is known as the city’s premier LGBTQ neighborhood, famous for its rainbow-painted crosswalks and LGBTQ-friendly cafes and bars. 

Construction of the building is scheduled to begin in late 2021 with a projected opening date of 18 months after groundbreaking, Collins said. 

The project is unique because it will be the second LGBTQ-friendly senior housing project in Texas, she said. 

Resource Center was established in 1983 as a food pantry for HIV patients. It has grown in size and scope to include hot meals programs, health services with HIV treatment and primary care, HIV testing, and advocacy and support for North Texas’ LGBTQ community. It also started the Thrive support group for LGBTQ members who are 50 and older.