This is part two of a three-part series on unhoused LGBTQ+ individuals. Read part 1 here.
The news that homelessness had leapt exponentially last year came as no surprise to Drew Chandler. At age 74, Chandler, a former sous chef for a South Philly Italian restaurant, has been “living on God’s good graces and not much else” for the past two years since his partner of 36 years — a retired music teacher he’d met when they were both in a choral group together — died suddenly after a brief illness and their home, on which they had to take a second mortgage, was foreclosed on.
Chandler, who spoke with PGN via phone from a temporary shelter provided by Project HOME, said, “Once Tom died, I just couldn’t afford to maintain the mortgage and still eat and pay for my medications. We weren’t legally married. You see — we meant to do it. We talked about it, but just never prioritized it as it didn’t feel necessary to either of us — and so I didn’t get his Social Security. And while Tom left me what savings he had, I had to pay a big tax bill on that. And it was just a downward spiral for me.”
“Overwhelmed with grief” at the loss of “the love of my life and the best companion you could imagine,” Chandler says he “fell apart” and didn’t really understand what was happening with the house “until it was too late. I can’t believe I lost our home — Tom loved our place so much. We walked to the park every day, and in the nice weather watched the bocce players. He loved bocce.”
Chandler, his voice choked with tears, said, “I can’t believe I failed him, failed us, so badly. And now, here I am, with no home, just floating and hoping things will get better, that the people I am working with now can find me a place to live.”
Chandler’s heartbreaking story is increasingly common. Widows and widowers are at greatest risk for homelessness according to a myriad of data. The Social Security Administration says “households headed by elderly women still experience substantially higher rates of poverty than do other households.” That data extrapolates readily to LGBTQ+ couples due to the same reasons: income lost upon a partner’s death and depletion of assets — exactly what happened to Chandler when his partner died.
SAGE (Advocacy & Services for LGBTQ+ Elders) is America’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people, focusing on the issue of LGBTQ+ aging. Data from SAGE suggests when a partner in an LGBTQ+ couple dies, it puts the surviving partner at high risk for poverty and homelessness.
Dr. David Vincent is the former chief program officer with SAGE, where he provided vision, oversight and leadership to all direct service programs at SAGE, including care management, housing, behavioral health and SAGE Center programming at the agency.
In an earlier phone interview, Vincent emphasized some of the critical issues for LGBTQ+ elders, notably how a lifetime of discrimination has often prevented them from accruing wealth and financial security.
“I think it’s important for LGBTQ older adults, when they are looking at their financial health, that they look at their history of discrimination and how homophobia and transphobia have impacted them,” Vincent said. “The inability to get married, to have a spouse’s pension, to build financial wealth and health has been denied to so many. LGBTQ people don’t have the income or savings of their peers, but it’s not their fault.”
Vincent detailed how “histories of discrimination” are so endemic to the lives of LGBTQ+ people that they might be aging and have no savings at all. Chandler, whose job provided an hourly wage, told PGN he never had savings and he was reliant on Tom for financial support once he could no longer work. Vincent says such scenarios are common — LGBTQ+ elders have often moved from job to job with little economic stability.
Vincent said of these histories of discrimination that most LGBTQ+ people carry, “We get so used to it and we try to move on from it. But at the end of the day, the U.S. government, landlords, employers, schools, families — all have a horrible track record of discrimination for LGBTQ people,” adding that discrimination puts LGBTQ+ elders at greater risk for chronic health problems, social isolation, poverty and even premature mortality.
As baby boomers and Gen Xers age, a series of economic downturns, the pandemic and the lack of a strong social safety net have combined to send more and more elderly Americans into homelessness — a number expected to rise quickly in the next few years. In November, researchers at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University published a 40-page study, Housing America’s Older Adults 2023, that warns millions more older adults won’t be able to afford housing in the next decade. Those data, combined with HUD’s (Housing and Urban Development) newly released 117-page Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, stating that the number of houseless people in the U.S. has risen a stunning 12% in the last year puts a shockingly large percentage of America’s seniors at risk. And as SAGE explains, LGBTQ+ elders are at highest risk.
According to the Harvard study, a combination of high housing costs and lower incomes among older adults is edging more seniors into homelessness. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of people living in homeless shelters or other temporary housing who were between 55 and 64 rose from 19.7% to 21.3%, according to the report.
The report revealed an all-time high of adults age 55 and older are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing — either on mortgage or rent.
In 2021, more than 11 million older adults were cost-burdened, up from 9.7 million in 2016, the report says. Among older renters, 56% of households were underwater financially in 2021. The report translates that into 4 million households of 55+, and for older homeowner households, 26% were equally straitened financially in 2021.
In 2022, more than 40% of homeowners — like Chandler’s partner, Tom — between the ages of 65 and 79 were paying off a mortgage and for homeowners aged 80 and older, that number was just over 30% in 2022.
SAGE estimates that the population of LGBTQ+ seniors in the United States will reach seven million by 2030. The oldest members of this population are more likely than their younger peers to have faced discrimination in employment and housing, and were young adults decades before same-sex relationships were afforded the economic and other advantages of civil marriage, as Chandler attests.
This displacement of and threat to older LGBTQ+ people was a driving force for PGN publisher Mark Segal, who just turned 73 himself, to establish housing for LGBTQ+ seniors a decade ago. John C. Anderson Apartments (JCAA) at 251 South 13th Street in the heart of the Gayborhood is “an urban LGBTQ+ affirming senior 62+ apartment community where everything you want is brought together: a location in the neighborhood where you want to live, amenities designed to make your life more enjoyable and features that are both modern and centered on comfort.”
The first housing complex in Philadelphia primarily for LGBTQ+ elders, and one of only a handful in the entire country, JCAA is the first senior citizen housing project built by and for the LGBTQ+ community in Pennsylvania. It was named for Anderson, a Black, gay member of City Council, who died in 1983 of AIDS when he was 41 years old.
The 56 one-bedroom apartments provide access to a community that many seniors on fixed incomes are seeking. Segal said his motivation for organizing the JCAA was simple — he wanted to ensure the generation of activists he first met as a gay teen at the dawn of Stonewall had a place to call home as they aged.
“As someone who has been an activist since 18 in 1969 at Stonewall, many of those I worked with from Gay Liberation Front, who were older than me, are now seniors,” Segal said. “Being part of the first OUT generation, many of them are being forced out of the gayborhoods they created. Many others are being put into senior homes where they are not, shall we say, inviting to LGBT elders.”
“We in the Gay Liberation Front changed the world, and now it was time to change the way we celebrate and care for our LGBT seniors, and that included having the federal government recognize LGBT seniors,” Segal added. “That is how John C. Anderson LGBT friendly Senior Affordable Apartments was born, the first in the nation to be federally recognized and also has now become the model for some 20 others now sprouting up around the country.”
The National LGBTQ+ Elder Housing Initiative is run by SAGE, and is a New York City nonprofit founded in 1978 that has developed subsidized rental buildings for seniors in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Sydney Kopp-Richardson, director of the National LGBTQ+ Elder Housing Initiative, said “The Anderson Apartments were at the forefront, and we showcase them.” About 30 LGBTQ-friendly affordable-housing projects are open or in some stage of development nationwide, Kopp-Richardson said.
It’s not nearly enough. According to the Harvard study, few older Americans can afford both their housing costs and the price of assisted living or a home health aide. In 97 U.S. metropolitan areas, Philadelphia among them, fewer than 1 in 5 adults age 75 or older could stretch their budgets enough to pay for both housing and care, the research revealed.
Longtime activist and writer/illustrator Mary Groce, who was PGN’s Person of the Year in 2020, spoke with PGN about the issues facing LGBTQ+ elders. Groce, 74, lives with her spouse, Suz Atlas, 80, at JCAA where Groce writes, edits and publishes the monthly newsletter. Groce called Anderson, “our Nirvana, our escape place.”
Groce told PGN, “Suz and I consider ourselves extremely fortunate to be living here at JCAA, as we are well aware that the amount of available housing for low-income LGBTQ+ seniors is woefully inadequate. Here we are surrounded by a treasure trove of queer people who are rich in humor, love, creativity, and overall brilliance, with high hopes for humanity. The fact that we’re not financially successful is not a measure of our worth but of the vicissitudes of our lives.”
She said of her and Atlas, “Suz and I often discuss all the options that should be available for affordable housing as well as for free housing for the homeless population, such as utilizing abandoned buildings like schools and — how about the empty Hahnemann Hospital? Why must all this real estate sit empty while Philadelphians are shivering on our sidewalks, begging for a crust of bread or some loose change? It could so easily be any one of us out there. It feels like we’re living inside a Dickens novel, and that’s a travesty.”
If you are in unstable housing or homeless, contact Project HOME at (215) 232-7272. Project HOME has a Where to Turn Guide listing available resources ranging from meals to legal services at projecthome.org/where-to-turn.
Next week: The epidemic of LGBTQ+ homelessness among Gen Y and Gen Z.
Resources for Older Adults
Project HOME: projecthome.org/help
SAGE x HearMe hotline: https://www.sageusa.org/hearme/
SAGE National LGBTQ+ Housing Initiative: https://www.sageusa.org/what-we-do/national-lgbt-housing-initiative/