PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Anita Rao. Margaret Roesch and Pat McAulay got together in their 40s... and as two lesbian women who’d come out in middle age, they were keenly aware of the challenges experienced by queer elders.
Pat McAulay
We certainly heard the stories of people having to go back in the closet if they go into assisted living or nursing homes, people being abused or discriminated against in housing. We knew that, that that future was not very bright.
Anita Rao
After struggling to find a senior housing community that fit their needs... they decided to build their own. We’ll hear that story plus a younger activist describes other housing options for queer elders... and the stakes younger folks have in creating more of them.
Jane Haskell
I started to meet transgender women who were in their fifties, sixties, seventies, and that gave me hope. Like how could I not help pave the way for elders who did that for me to be here?
Anita Rao
Those stories...Just ahead on Embodied.
Anita Rao
By the time Pat McAulay and her wife Margaret Roesch were in their forties, they already had a concrete dream for their later in life era.
Pat McAulay
If you talk to any group of lesbians, everybody will say we should live together and take care of each other when we get older.
Anita Rao
Throughout midlife, pat and Margaret pressure tested this vision through regular beach trips with 10 to 15 people sharing a big house.
Pat McAulay
Those beach trips were magical. Always something going on. Always somebody to talk to. Always somebody to play a game with or go for a walk with. It was like, this is, this is what it could be.
Anita Rao
But when they reached retirement age and started planning more concretely, that vision felt more like a fantasy.
Pat McAulay
Just the idea of a multi-story house doesn't work for seniors. So, you know, that was the very first thing. It's like, oh, we can't have a big house. We have to do something different.
Anita Rao
This is embodied our show about sex, relationships, and your health. I'm Anita Rao.
Pat and Margaret had specific criteria in mind when searching for the right place to retire around other queer folks, and they couldn't find exactly what they wanted, so they decided to build a place of their own. This 28 unit neighborhood now lies on 15 acres of land in Durham, North Carolina. It's called Village Hearth, and they've been living there since 2020.
Village Hearth is the first co-housing community in the country built specifically for L-G-B-T-Q, seniors and allies. This group faces distinct challenges in older age, from isolation to struggles and accessing care and services because of their sexuality. In national surveys of queer elders, one of the top line concerns is finding a physical space to live and age safely and openly.
That was a big motivating factor behind Village Hearth, especially because Pat and Margaret both came out in middle age and did not wanna have to go back in the closet. They also knew the perils of isolation in the early years of their relationship in Durham, they had built a strong queer community and then a big life transition disrupted it. Here's Margaret.
Margaret Roesch
We moved to South Florida for my job and I thought, well, certainly we'll be able to build a, a robust social circle in Florida because we could. We did it in Durham. Yeah. And that was not to be, we tried everything. We went to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Church. We tried to build. Community with our, uh, work colleagues. We went to the L-G-B-T-Q Center and everything we did just fell flat. Hmm. We, in eight years that we lived there, we were never invited out to dinner with anybody. Most of my work colleagues were 20 years younger than me and, you know, I would maybe get invited occasionally or. It was just, it was a desert. It was really, it was really sad.
Pat McAulay
It was just the two of us. Yeah, it was really Margaret working, um, all that on her own because I decided to transition into teaching. Okay. So I needed to do college courses to get some credits that I was missing in order to do that. And then once I started teaching, that was my. Total focus. And so she was left at home at night while I was still grading papers or planning for the lesson for the next day, trying to stay a day ahead of the kids. So she was on her own a lot and, and it was so weird in South Florida because people would say, you know, we moved here and we can't make any friends. And it's like, there's all these people who are here who can't make friends, so why aren't we making friends with each other?
Anita Rao
Yeah.
Pat McAulay
It was very strange, but we did not fit in. Birkenstock wearing lesbians, and that's not that they're pretty people in South Florida.
Anita Rao
Did you feel comfortable in your relationship there, like being fully out, being fully kind of yourselves in the way that you had been in the community you'd built in Durham?
Pat McAulay
Uh, I could not as a teacher. Okay. Tell me more. Um, we were warned specifically that people had been fired from their jobs for being out. And so, um, I was. I was actually out to my colleagues, but I couldn't talk to the kids about it, and so we really had to watch carefully. I hated that. Yeah. Piece because, you know, we came out so late, we didn't wanna have to go back in the closet again.
Anita Rao
So after eight years, you did decide to move back to Durham. How was your relationship with your sexuality and the experience of having lived for a while in a place where you didn't feel comfortable? How did that affect your thoughts moving back to Durham about what you wanted next?
Pat McAulay
Well, we knew that. We could be out in Durham, Uhhuh. And I mean, it was, you know, like shedding this cloak of invisibility, you know. Um, so we were very comfortable with, uh, with the idea. We knew we wanted to be here.
Anita Rao
Well, I'm curious about like as you watched your older friends or older queer folks age, like, did you hear stories about their experiences in older age trying to find housing or trying to figure out what to do that informed your thoughts about what you all wanted?
Pat McAulay
I. I don't think we had anybody in our circle, but we certainly heard the stories. What were the stories you heard? Just, uh, horror stories of people having to go back in the closet if they go into assisted living or nursing homes, um, people being, um, abused or discriminated against, um, in housing. And so that, you know, the, the warnings were out there already. We, we knew that, that that future was not very bright.
Anita Rao
What kind of conversations were you having at that point about. The next chunk of your life at this point? Y'all were in your fifties, is that right? Our late fifties. Late fifties. And we were getting
Margaret Roesch
ready to retire. Okay. So, um, yeah, it's like, well, what are we gonna do now? Where are we gonna live? And we knew we didn't want. To buy another place, uh, right away. So we rented, um, apartments and tried to figure out what's, what's it gonna look like. So we've, once we figured out co-housing, there's lots of co-housing in Durham, and we looked at everything that was here, but nothing was handicapped accessible. Everything was a multi-story. And almost all of it was multi-generational. And we started looking at that concept and we go, eh, I don't know that we wanna be around a lot of families with young kids. So we were looking at a a 55 plus community, and the more we looked, the more we realized it wasn't here already. And it's like, oh my goodness, what are we gonna do? We love Durham. So we started going to conferences, doing a lot of research. And we decided maybe we were gonna have to build our own.
Anita Rao
So it was clear that there were experiences of a discrimination that elder L-G-B-T-Q folks experienced that you all had heard about. You were trying to think about what you wanted for yourselves and looking at models. That existed. What led you to co-housing and being curious about co-housing in particular, and maybe explain a little bit about what co-housing is so we can understand the appeal.
Margaret Roesch
People are living in their own individual homes, but they're living in a tight community. Ours is. 28 homes, we're on 15 acres, but our homes are only on the five acres. So we're very close to each other. The way the homes are built, you, um, are not in each other's business, but you, uh, have a relationship with most everybody in the community in some way or another. But the point is that it's, it's like the old fashioned neighborhoods where, you know, when, when something's going good or bad in someone's. Someone, someone's home. When somebody's sick, somebody needs something, you need to take somebody a, a meal or give them a ride to the doctor or, uh, help them out with something. And anytime you need help, you can put out a, a plea and the help is there. So co-housing, you have your own discrete home that's, uh, fully functioning. You have your own kitchen and everything, but we, our homes are small. These are condos. You own them. And then there's a shared common house that does have a big kitchen that we can share. And we have group meetings there, group meals. That idea is these are people who didn't wanna be alone and isolated. They don't wanna be in. A regular neighborhood where you can just drive in to your garage and put down the garage door and never see your neighbors again. This is where you have to walk from your car. Down a sidewalk to your house, and maybe you're gonna stop and talk to your neighbor for a few minutes and see what they're up to today and see who's playing cards tonight or what's going on on the weekend. And I like that kind of thing. Some other people may say, oh no, there's no way. But for me, that's my, that's my life. Yeah. This is what I love.
Anita Rao
I'm curious, Pat, you are more of an introvert. How do the dynamics of a cohousing space work for you?
Pat McAulay
It real. It's really a good place for introverts because we get to pick and choose what we participate in and when. I wanna go back to Cohousing. Yeah. Um, cohousing is a way of living as much as it is as the design that supports that. And so, like Margaret was saying, the proximity of the homes, you know, you run into each other, you know, even just a, even just a nod with somebody to acknowledge that you're on the earth Yeah. Is helpful in reducing isolation.
Anita Rao
It's actually designed. In a way to promote spontaneous interaction. I know that you all didn't have experience with real estate really, or design, but you did work with someone who understood Cohousing. Can you talk about the specific design elements that were considered when you made Village Hearth to make it a space that would facilitate that kind of. Shared community. Sure.
Pat McAulay
We had a preliminary design or idea from the architect. Um, but the, um, the design elements are that we, um, when we worked with the architect on the, the workshop, um, you know, we, he had us lay out things on the, the site plan, uh, lay out little houses on the site plan, and then he said, okay, now try to bring those. Closer together. Can you bring it any more closer together? Hmm. Because every foot of sidewalk is costing you money. And we also did an exercise with, um, people standing like a hundred feet apart and walking toward each other. And then they were each to stop when they felt comfortable. Wow. And so from that, he got an average distance of how far our houses could be.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we'll hear how Pat and Margaret convinced other queer seniors to join their close community and how they've tackled difficult conversations about identity. In the five years Village Hearts has been open. You're listening to Embodied from North Carolina Public Radio, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. In 2015, Margaret Roesch and her wife, pat McAulay, began building the retirement community of their dreams. The two wanted to age in a place where spontaneous connection was built into the fabric of daily life and where they could be in proximity to other L-G-B-T-Q elders. Their co-housing community called Village Hearth opened in 2020. It's built on 15 acres of land in Durham, North Carolina, and consists of 28 single dwelling homes in a shared common house. But long before they could break ground, pat and Margaret started convincing other queer seniors to join them, which involved a little creativity.
Pat McAulay
We laugh about selling air. Um, once we had land it was a little easier to say, we wanna build this cooperative community where people care about each other and we're gonna do it here in North Durham on this land. Do you wanna come? Do you want you wanna know more?
Anita Rao
How much of the pitch was about it being a space for L-G-B-T-Q folks versus older folks? I know that it's obviously a space for both, but I'm curious about how you all talked about that and how you represented the vibes that you were looking for.
Pat McAulay
Right. Yeah. We, um, we decided that we were going to be open about wanting an LGBT community and we were not gonna fear. Whatever would happen as a resource that, like by putting that out there explicitly. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted it to be known. It was not a secret community. And so we, um, we did advertising in the indie and, um, sponsorships on WUNC for local things. And then, um, lesbian Connection, um, gay and Lesbian Review, the Washington Blade, and that's how we picked up people from. Ultimately 12 states and Canada.
Anita Rao
Wow. So tell me about the people who did move in. You said you had representatives of 12 different states. What kind of stories did you hear about why? People wanted to live in a space like this. It's so,
Margaret Roesch
every story is so different that, uh, somebody said she was closeted the whole time through her work. Wow. And she wanted to be able to be out when she retired. Somebody else, uh, is an ally and said, but she has a, a gay daughter. Who lives in, uh, the triangle area and wanted to move from where she was living to be close to her daughter and her wife. Someone else was leaving a relationship, moved across the country and uh, was gonna be single as an older adult and said, I just wanna be. I wanna be included. I wanna be in the community. And other couples have joined us and said, I don't like where I'm living now. I wanna be out. I wanna be able to hold hands with my partner. I wanna be able to to kiss her or him when we greet each other. And I wanna be able to use terms of endearment. And I wanna be able to fly a gay flag or have a bumper sticker on my car and you know, I'm tired of having to be cautious. Yeah. Where I live now had several people move from the south, uh, from Texas or Florida for those reasons because it's not as safe there. Yeah.
Anita Rao
There are 28 different. Units and I, I know that when you all are recruiting people, like you're obviously intentional about saying this is who this community is for L-G-B-T-Q folks and allies. Legally you can restrict it to people 55 plus, but. You can't legally restrict it just to people who are L-G-B-T-Q. So how do you talk about sexuality in the recruitment process? How do you navigate those conversations? Pat?
Pat McAulay
We still say that it's um, LGBT focused that, that it was built by and for LGBT folks and their allies and we always have to say that it's 55 plus because we are. Using that, um, exception to the Fair Housing Laws to restrict it to that. You know, we don't ask anybody for their. Gay card. Yeah.
Anita Rao
There's no, there's no proof required there.
Pat McAulay
There isn't. Yeah. And, and so there are some people who live in our community who we don't know. Yeah. Uh, if they're on, on the spectrum or not. Um, and that's fine. Yeah. You know, we use it in our advertising all the time so people are aware that that's the intent of the community.
Anita Rao
How do you all given that it was such a. A priority and intention to make this a space where everyone felt safe and affirmed. How do you balance the needs and desires of allies and of L-G-B-T-Q folk in like your programming? Is that something you're thinking about? Like how do we make sure this overall community has a good balance at any given time? Or is that, yeah, is that part of the calculation of deciding. Who's gonna live in the community?
Margaret Roesch
I don't, I don't count, and I don't do percentages. Sometimes people go, well, we need to be, you know, X percent this, X percent that, and I go, I don't even know what some folks identify as. Yeah. And some folks have changed their identities since I've lived here, so I, yeah, I don't ask. It's not important to me. Yeah. I want everyone, I want to honor everyone's, uh, life, and it's just, it's not relevant to me. So when somebody wants to do percentages and wants to count things up, what I do, what am totally honest about is how many male. Residents we have and how many female residents we have because we are very female, um, skewed right now. Okay. Which is pretty typical of Cohousing. Okay.
Pat McAulay
But we're rather extreme,
Anita Rao
How, how extreme?
Pat McAulay
Yeah. We have four men right now. Four men.
Anita Rao
Out of how many total residents?
Pat McAulay
Uh, about 30, 35, 6. Yeah. Yeah, they're really nice guys. Yeah. And they like being around women.
Anita Rao
So let's talk about the co-housing piece of it specifically. That's as, as you said, it's, it's not just kind of the design of the space, but it's the shared responsibility. It's the shared decision making. So maybe paint us a picture of what it's like to be there on an average week in terms of your responsibilities. In Cohousing and how that, how the actual community operates.
Pat McAulay
Mm-hmm. So we have a number of teams, committees, if you will, who, um, divide up the work. So you may be on a team that meets once a month and you may be on a team that meets more often. Almost everybody's on a meal squad. And so we have a rotation, a six week rotation for that, where we do one. Community meal a week. We celebrate holidays really well. Uh, people really are enthusiastic about contributing to those kinds of celebrations. We have meetings of the, the whole group or plenary meetings where we make decisions together. Um, and that's been, um. A long, long learning process for how do we make decisions together with all these people getting there?
Anita Rao
Is there an example that comes to mind of. The challenges of that, a decision that you all had to make where doing it with that many people?
Margaret Roesch
Well, I can give a funny example.
Anita Rao
Yeah, Margaret, you have an example.
Margaret Roesch
Maybe Pat will come up with a serious one. So we have, on our patio, we have six tables and we have six colorful umbrellas on the tables. It took more than one meeting to decide what colors that the umbrellas were gonna be. Were they gonna be all one color? Were they gonna be six different colors? If there were gonna be six different colors, what colors were they gonna be? Who was gonna choose the colors? So to get 28 homes to make a decision, you know, so those kind of things are. Now made on a team level, they are not made Okay. On an entire plenary.
Anita Rao
So you have to have consensus of the team, but not consensus of every single resident. So, okay. So
Margaret Roesch
we have learned a lot in the, that was early days. Okay.
Pat McAulay
Okay. So there's, uh, low level, medium level, and high level things. And so the, the teams can handle, you know, they have a defined domain. And things that they're allowed to do and make decisions of and spend their budget on. Okay. But when we talk about something that impacts the entire community, um, for instance, wanting to put solar on the common house, big expense deadlines with tax credits running out and, and all that. And so we've had this. This has been perking now for three years. So it's a, a decision that is really difficult to make. Yeah. But we are finding that the more preparation we do and the more we talk to people individually ahead of time whom we know are gonna have questions. 'cause there, there are some people who will. Just go into the minute details. Yeah. And it might not, IM impact what, how they feel about it, but they, they wanna know. Yeah. And so, you know, now that we know. That kind of thing. We know to talk to people individually. Yeah. And get those questions and find the answers and do the presentations. And so we're, we're getting better at that process. And sometimes it still feels laborious, but it feels so good when we finally get there that. We know that everybody supports the decision, or at least doesn't object to it.
Anita Rao
Yeah, I, I wanna hear more about the kind of collective care piece around aging. I know older adults in the L-G-B-T-Q community are twice as likely to live alone and less likely to have children than their non LGBT peers. So how do those statistics line up with the realities that you all see in your community? Margaret,
Margaret Roesch
well, our community steps up, especially for short term kind of things. We've got, um, I just recently had a hip replacement surgery that did not go well. I had a complication and I ended up in a rehab center for a month. Mm. And every single day there was someone from our community who came out and visited me at a rehab facility over in Chapel Hill. Wow. Which was not, I mean, it was at least 30, 40 minute drive. One way to get over there. And I even, I kept a, a log on. I had a, a, a bulletin board that I had people write on and, you know, put their name on every single day that it came to visit me. And it was just. An amazing amount of support and what a drudgery to visit somebody in a nursing home, you know? But the contrast was that my older sister up in Indiana also was going through a rehab at the same time, and she was. Just whining and crying all the time because nobody would visit, or even family members and which we have a lot of family up around her, and she said, you're so lucky you live there, that all those people are supporting you. And it's like, well, you know, we've worked hard to build this, this kind of support here. So just the co-housing mindset, it's like, of course we're going to support each other that. That's just part of the structure. Yeah. You build that social capital and that's what we do, but we're not going to support each other on a long-term basis if someone needs daily care forever. Um, we're not, we don't go in and give each other baths. We do not, there, you know, there's certain things we are not agreeing to do. We are not assisted living. We are not a skilled nursing home. We don't have those kind of, uh, credentials or anything like that, but we walk each other's dogs. We, uh, fix a meal. We run errands, go to the store. All those kinds of things we are on top of. Uh, drive each other to doctor's appointments.
Anita Rao
Yeah. When. When you were talking Margaret, you described like there are things we do and there are things we don't do. We're not an assisted living facility. We can't provide skilled in home care. I guess I'm wondering how you all think about a phase of your life where you might need that and, and how are you thinking about that now and, and what will it look like to try to find, are there spaces like that that are L-G-B-T-Q affirming that you feel like are a next step or how are you all thinking about th that piece of the conversation?
Pat McAulay
Our goal is to be able to stay in our home because we have the means to have a full-time caregiver if we need it, would be difficult with the two of us. Um, we're in a two bedroom, two bath and each have our own room, and so having space for a caregiver to live in is difficult, but we would figure something out. But. We also recognize that there there's a limit. Yeah. And so we might not be able to stay until we die, but that's our, that's our goal. Yeah. And there is no place after her recent experience in the hospital and in rehab, I don't think there's any place around here that we would feel comfortable going to having to go to every fear that we had. Was manifested during her stay in rehab.
Anita Rao
Hmm. In terms of how people responded to you as a couple or your ability to get your needs met? A little of both. Both. Okay.
Margaret Roesch
We're, you know, we're lucky. I mean, I, I hire a private caregiver now two days a week for eight hours just to get me to doctor's appointments and things. 'cause I don't drive. Okay. I use a wheelchair now, but we're lucky that we can. Do that. And there's a, a couple other families in our community now who use private caregivers Okay. On an hourly basis. But we know that a lot of, um. People can't afford those kind of things. And so unfortunately we have to say that, you know, if, if there comes a time when you would need to move out into an assisted living or a skilled nursing facility, we're sorry. But that's, that would be the next step.
Pat McAulay
And, and we say that going in, yeah, we have to make it clear that we don't provide any medical services. You're not guaranteed that somebody's gonna give you a ride to the doctor three times a week or whatever, and that whatever you would have done in your private home before moving in, that's what you'll need to do here.
Anita Rao
I'm curious about how your relationship has been affected by living in this community, how your romantic relationship, your own partnership, has been affected by the dynamics of. Being in this community with other queer elders, I think it's been great
Margaret Roesch
because it's really led us both. Experience what we need to and how we want to. I've been able to run off with and, uh, do little day trips or weekend trips when Pat's been wanting to do writing retreats at home or elsewhere. And, um, I've had people that I could do that with and that would've never happened if we were in, uh. Single family home somewhere. I, when I wanna go play a game, you know, board games or something, or go to happy hour, pat usually doesn't go to the Friday happy hour. And I, I almost always go and it's like I can just roll my wheelchair down Yeah. To the common house. And when I need some people contact. There's always somebody I can, I can go find and, and she can have her, her calm and, and privacy and, and I can go out and play. Yeah. Yeah.
Pat McAulay
And since she's been in the wheelchair for eight years now, I mean, it is the best of any world for us because she is so. Um, social. Yeah. And so she really can get her needs met and doesn't have to rely on me to take her out or, um, which is difficult for me because I have my own mobility issues. So, I mean, it's, it's been fabulous.
Anita Rao
So this community has existed for five years. What do you all hope for the next. 10 years of the community and, and how it continues to evolve.
Margaret Roesch
Well, I just hope that things continue to run more and more smoothly. Um, as far as the, the processes and decision making, we've, we've come a long way. Some of that was a little rocky the first few years. They say kind of between five and seven years, you, you kind of really get things in good shape. So we're, we're looking forward to that.
Anita Rao
Yeah. How about you, Pat?
Pat McAulay
Yeah, I think the, the community, I, I wanna see it continue to mature. We've recently spent time on, um, workshops and conflict resolution, which we probably should have done five years ago, but had other things on our mind at that time, but. I'd like to see the community remain open to others' ideas as they come in and, and ways to improve what we're doing to make the community run smoothly.
Anita Rao
How does Village Hearth compare to the vision that you had of this beach house full of women supporting each other, laughing together, making meals? Like is it a full, is it a, a full circle and improved, or, or how does it compare?
Margaret Roesch
Oh, I think it's improved. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's exponentially better than anything we had planned. That we had imagined. Yeah.
Anita Rao
Well, thank you both so much for the conversation, for sharing the stories of the space with me and for your time. I so appreciate it.
Pat McAulay
Thank you, Anita.
Margaret Roesch
Thank you.
Anita Rao
Just ahead. We'll learn about other models for senior L-G-B-T-Q, folks who wanna age in community like affordable housing, long-term care, and even mobile home communities. As always, you can hear the podcast version of the show by following embodied on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I am Anita Rao. Today we're talking about the unique needs of LGBTQ seniors and models that exist to help them age in community. We just talked about Village Hearth, a co-housing community in Durham, North Carolina for LGBTQ, elders and Allies. But cohousing is just one model. There are others from market rate, apartment communities, and condos to affordable housing complexes designed with LGBTQ elders in mind. But how do you go about finding a space to fit your needs? That's where the work of SAGE comes in. SAGE is a nonprofit advocacy and service organization focused on lgbtq plus seniors, and it runs an initiative helping to develop more queer friendly housing around the country.
Jane Haskell is the director of Impact and engagement at Sage, and she spent three and a half years as an advocate for lgbtq plus elders. Early on, she got insight into the specific challenges they face around aging.
Jane Haskell
So before I joined Sage, I was working at a local organization here in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I was working with a group of seniors to really bring them out of their homes and socialized. And when I was doing that work, I of course learned about. Some of the other issues that they were dealing with. One person in particular was living in an apartment and the landlord wanted to sell, and of course this person has very limited income. They. Don't have familial support. They live on their own, don't have children, don't have family alive anymore, so they rely on social support. I struggled to. Help this person find one affordable housing in general, because we know that there is a lack of affordable housing specifically for older adults. And then when you add the LGBTQ plus identity on top of that and want to make sure that the housing is welcoming, affirming. And really supportive of the needs of lgbtq plus elders. It just makes it challenging to find something in Florida among other communities across the country.
Anita Rao
That's a really helpful example, and I'm curious if there are things about that person's life that made it. Like the stakes higher for them needing to find a space that was more explicitly friendly or catering to an LGBTQ person.
Jane Haskell
I think in general, people fear that they need to go back in the closet. You know, this person. Was aging, they had multiple comorbidities and were dealing with health issues. So I think they really wanted a place where they could feel safe, right? Because the only time they really left was for support groups to go to the doctor's office, and that means they're home a majority of the time, and that really just makes. Them need a home that is safe, that is welcoming, that's not going to add to their mental health struggle or their physical health struggles.
Anita Rao
I would love for you to give us a snapshot of the models that exist for queer affirming housing for seniors. If we kind of zoom out, like what are the, the range of models that we know of that have been created to cater to this group with specific needs?
Jane Haskell
So one of the biggest and most used models that we see is. The affordable housing model that is primarily funded through Litech, which stands for lower Income Housing tax Credit. So states often have funds that they're able to. Designate for Litech developments, developers are then able to apply for that funding and create such housing. I will say that that primarily exists in really urban communities, which makes it. Challenging for folks in, in rural communities to really access that housing. Currently there are about 27, um, developments that have been created across the country that. Results in about 2000, you know, units for LGBTQ affirming housing for our queer elders. As you can imagine, the need is much bigger than those 2000 units, so. It's important to look at other models, right? Are there rooms in houses that are available that folks are able to rent out to our LGBTQ elders and really welcome them into their home? There are also community land trusts, limited equity cooperatives. You know, people are building accessory dwelling units or ADUs on their property, really trying to expand the types of housing that are available to LGBTQ plus elders, because we know, again, the Litech model is pretty limited. While there are. Quite a few folks in development at the moment. It takes time. One of the newest properties is called the Pride in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston, and that property took roughly 10 years from. The ideation phase to opening and lease up, so it's not like this is going to open overnight and immediately be available for the need that exists within the LGBTQ Elder community.
Anita Rao
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that one of the challenges is that for the most part, these queer affordable housing projects are located in more urban areas, so I'm, I'm curious to ask you about options and models that do exist for people living in more rural places. I know that there are some kind of very. Non-traditional ways of making community around like mobile homes and, and groups of mobile homes that are queer friendly or RV communities. I would love to know about any of those models or networks that have formed that could be alternatives for people who are farther away from those urban centers.
Jane Haskell
That's exactly right. We do see communities of mobile homes of RVs that are lgbtq plus centric and again, are more affordable. It's usually more affordable to rent or purchase a mobile home, um, an rv and. You generally have a greater sense of community because people are living close. You know, similar to an apartment complex. When you're in a mobile home community, people live very close to one another, so there is that community. Centric way of life in those spaces, and they do pop up in more rural communities. There are networks, there are websites to be able to find these communities, and Sage has released some documents and created some resources to help people locate these types of housing. Another thing that's important to consider is. Making sure that we're educating ourselves, that we're educating our staffs of existing housing communities, whether it's affordable or not, whether it's a retirement community, a long-term care community assisted living facility, making sure that we are doing everything we can to make existing housing inclusive and welcoming to the LGBTQ plus. Community. The Long-Term Care Quality Index is a program by Sage in the human rights campaign. That is a benchmarking tool to help. Elder housing communities, whether it's long-term care or not, go through their policies, go through their procedures, go through training to make sure that their existing policies, procedures, and programming is welcoming to lgbtq plus elders. It's also important to remember. LGBTQ plus staff because when staff see themselves represented and when they see their community being cared for, there's, you know, greater. Job security people are wanting to stay in these com in these communities where they do see themselves represented. That's one angle of creating more equitable housing is working with existing housing and really ensuring that communities in rural spaces that do exist. Are inclusive.
Anita Rao
Yeah. I wanna ask you more about that because you know, as we've been talking about, there's more demand than there is supply for communities that are explicitly designed with L-G-B-T-Q folks in mind. So. There are also groups of people who have higher needs, who need to be in a more skilled nursing facility, who need to be living with more direct care. So I would love to know like how does someone who is kind of looking for a place to live, who needs a space either in a community that doesn't have an explicitly L-G-B-T-Q affirming. Community or needs more care than the spaces that exist? What are things you can look out for when you're in that process to see if a place is gonna be a good fit for you?
Jane Haskell
Sage has several resources to help folks locate LGBTQ affirming housing in their community. Whether it's rural, whether it's urban, suburban, like you said. Um, a lot of times there are kind of affirming housing deserts and we help people locate affirming services. One of the ways in which we do that is through. The National Resource Center on LGBTQ Aging, which is a free website that anyone can access. We have several guides dedicated for LGBTQ elders themselves to help them find. This type of housing. There is a resource in both English and Spanish that is titled Finding a Welcoming Long-Term Care Community. And that kind of walks people through what questions should I be asking, which to expand further on that. It's important to know will my children, if I do have children, will they be welcome in this community Will. My partner, if I am partnered, will we be able to share the same room? You know, just these basic questions like what type of programming do you do? You know, how do you see yourself? Reflected in this community. Are there photos in the brochures of same-sex couples? Are there activities where you do see yourself wanting to participate in your full identity? So we do have guides like that. You can also go through the Sage Care website, which Sage Care is our training and credentialing programming. We work with a lot of long-term care communities to, again, train them, make sure they are equitable, and we have a database of providers that have gone through this training, so we recommend folks look there to see what in their community is accessible. We also work with area agencies on aging. We educate. These service providers to help them understand what is available in their community. Elders often reach out to, you know, existing services and their network. And the more that these providers know what in their community is LGBTQ plus welcoming, the more we're able to refer people to really affirming and uplifting services and housing communities.
Anita Rao
You are in your early thirties, so I, I just am very curious about what it has been like to do this work and dig so deeply into thinking about aging at such an early stage in your own life. Like how has this work shaped your own sense of what you want your own aging process to look like?
Jane Haskell
What a great question. I am a transgender woman and I really didn't see myself aging. I think a lot of queer people struggle to see themselves aging because one, we don't really see. Queer elder people in the media. Um, you have to really know people in the community to see yourself and to see yourself aging. And that's how I found myself like thinking about aging. I started to meet transgender women who were in their fifties, sixties, seventies, and. That gave me hope that there is a future for me. That I do get to live a long life. I get to build a life that I want to exist in where I can thrive, right? Not only survive, but thrive. So it feels like an honor to do this work. I always say that our elders are the ones who paved the way for us to be here today. Even having this. Conversation for me to be the out proud transgender woman that I am today, living in the state of Florida, I really owe it to my elders. So for me it is. A no brainer, like, how could I not do this work? How could I not help pave the way for elders who did that for me to be here? So I try to take all of the lessons that I learned from our elders and apply that. To the work to better their lives because again, we want them to live even longer. We want them to have long, healthy, fulfilled lives.
Anita Rao
My last question is just if you could kind of like send a message to your 65 plus self, a message in the bottle about what you want kind of queer aging in community to look like. Do you have a version of what that might be?
Jane Haskell
I just envision a place of love and acceptance. I. Hope that my future self feels supported. I recently got married and I'm hoping that my partners alongside me and that we both feel as if we can age in community with other lgbtq plus people. I hope that our allies are surrounding us and showing us love and appreciation. We always stay in the community. To give our elders their flowers while they're still here. And I hope not only us, I hope not only we get our flowers, but the entire community because again, elders have really paved the way for. The LGBTQ plus community to be where it is today, and we kind of owe it to our elders. So I hope you know that I am able to rest. I hope that I'm able to thrive and live the life that I have worked hard and dreamed of.
Anita Rao
Jane Haskell, thank you so much for sharing so much of yourself and your work. Uh, I really appreciate it.
Jane Haskell
Thanks so much. It's been an honor.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about Jane Haskell, Pat McAulay and Margaret Roesch at our website, embodiedwunc.org. You can also find all episodes of Embodied the Radio show there and subscribe to our weekly podcast. Today's episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Wilson Sayre provided editorial guidance. Nina Scott is our intern, and Jenni Lawson, our technical director, Quilla, wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District. North Carolina Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am Anita Rao.