When 61-year-old Pat Cummings recently moved to the new Town Hall Apartments—Chicago’s first LGBT-friendly affordable senior housing facility—she found solace in more than the cheap rent. Cummings has returned to Boystown, where she first lived when she came to Chicago more than three decades ago.
Nationally, the population of elderly gay, lesbian and bisexual people will double from about 1.5 million in 2010 to three million by 2030, according to the LGBT group Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Older LGBT adults are poorer and less financially secure than American elders generally, SAGE finds. In Chicago, there are about 40,000 LGBT persons over the age of 55, a fifth of them living in poverty, according to a 2005 report that the antipoverty organization (and Center on Halsted partner) Heartland Alliance commissioned. In a study released earlier this year by the Equal Rights Center, almost half of same-sex couples looking for senior housing encountered discrimination.
The $23.7 million building is currently fully leased, with 84 residents (the one-bedroom units house five couples). The rent for each unit, which is subsidized by the Chicago Housing Authority, equals 30 percent of a resident’s income.
I felt I was female from early on, like seventh or eighth grade. I started looking at how women dressed.
And then one day in 2008, I said, “It’s time. I gotta go.” I went to the Center on Halsted, and I wound up getting a therapist. Pandora’s box opened up. I was like a kid in the candy store. I started going to Howard Brown for my medical needs and I started doing hormones around Thanksgiving of ’09, and I haven’t looked back.
Here I’m right by the Center. It’s great. The shower has a seat I can pull out. It’s great for shaving legs. I don’t have to do all those yoga moves like I had to before. And Boystown is the most Eva-friendly neighborhood there is.
