Housing Project for Aging LGBT
Community Finally a Go
By
Melissa Dribben, The Inquirer
April 16, 2012
Mark
Segal , publisher of the Philadelphia Gay
News, stands at the project site on South
13th Street. RICHARD KAUFFMAN / Staff
Photographer
Mark Segal had been biting his
nails, waiting for the call. Thursday
morning, he was drinking a mug of sweet
vanilla coffee in his den above the
offices of the Philadelphia Gay News
when the phone finally rang.
His dream project, an
affordable housing complex welcoming to
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
seniors, had won a competitive bid for
an $11 million state tax credit.
"I've been trying not to cry,"
Segal said Sunday, barely succeeding in
holding back the kvell.
For more than three years, the
61-year-old founder and publisher of PGN
has been planning, lobbying,
negotiating, collaborating, and cajoling
every social-service agency, activist
group, and political leader he knows to
make Philadelphia one of the first
cities in the nation to meet the needs
of the aging LGBT community.
On Monday afternoon, Segal will
appear with Mayor Nutter and many of the
others who have supported the project to
share the good news about the tax
credit, which makes it possible now to
announce the project's official launch.
He's been invited to talk later
in the week, he said, about it in
Washington at a White House conference
on housing. Segal shares credit for the
project with dozens of agencies that
have supported the proposal openly and
behind the scenes, calling it a true
team effort.
"In their golden years, LGBT
seniors need a safe and loving place to
grow old," Segal said. "This is going to
change the lives of so many people."
He has a list of stories to
explain why.
The gay man, for example, who
called Segal from a senior housing
community in the Philadelphia suburbs
and described how fellow residents
regularly formed a prayer circle around
him, trying to enlist God's help in
removing the "gay" from his soul.
Or partners who have lived
together for decades telling him how
they had been prevented from staying
with each other in nursing homes. Others
who live isolated in boarding rooms
because they have no spouses or
children. And couples who, because they
were never allowed to wed, do not
receive the financial and social
benefits that help long-married
heterosexual seniors, widows, and
widowers enjoy a more secure retirement.
"And then there are people who
have lived closeted their whole lives,"
Segal said. "For them to be able to move
into the gayborhood where they can be
surrounded by their community for the
first time, do you know what kind of
freedom that will give them? The impact
that will have?"
The new complex, a six-story
building with 56 one-bedroom units, will
be built on South 13th Street between
Locust and Spruce. If all goes according
to plan, it will be ready for occupancy
in late 2013. Residents must be at least
62 - but not necessarily lesbian, gay,
bisexual, or transgender - to live
there.
A previous proposal would have
placed the residences above the William
Way Center, a hub for LGBT services
nearby. Community members objected,
fearing the logistics of adding on to
the aging building and complicated
bureaucratic fallout would cause
problems for William Way. So, with help
from city officials and advice from the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, the new site was chosen.
"It would be nice when one is
approaching one's dotage to have the
comfort factor" of living in a
nonjudgmental community, said Donald
Carter, who cofounded Philadelphia's
chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans.
Carter, 62, a longtime mentor
for Action AIDS, said he had watched men
who had been openly gay for most of
their lives have to return to the
closet, hiding their sexuality, when
they move into assisted-living
facilities where they believe they will
face prejudice.
"It does make for a very
difficult adjustment," said Carter, who
is living on a fixed income and who
rents a third-floor walk-up in
University City. "I'm at the point
where, with my neuropathy and arthritis,
I won't be able to do the three flights
of stairs after a while."
The New York nonprofit Services
and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) has
estimated there are 1.5 million LGBT
elders in the United States. Because
they grew up in an era when
homosexuality was classified as both a
mental illness and a crime, this
population approaches old age with more
financial and mental-health problems
than the general population and less
support from families and community.
And because most states have no
laws prohibiting discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation, LGBT
seniors may have no legal recourse when
landlords evict them.
Jacob Fisher, senior developer
for Pennrose Properties L.L.C., the
company that will build the Philadelphia
project, said the structure will include
2,500 square feet of retail space on the
ground floor.
It will have a community
center, garden, and areas where
social-service agencies will provide
medical care and other assistance.
The $19 million project will be
funded with $8 million in public funding
and the $11 million tax credit announced
last week. That sum, Fisher said, which
originated with the federal low-income
tax-credit program, will be sold to
private investors and then applied to
building.
"When I first started on this,
I called it the Pie in the Sky project,"
Segal said. "Now I'm saying it's LGBT
seniors getting a piece of the American
pie."
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