There may be scores of reasons why it is indeed time both to cultivate a regional as well as a global climate that is supportive and responsive to the very notion of meeting the housing and health care needs of LGBT elders and to move forward with practical grassroots plans and policies that can accomplish the task of designing and building LGBT senior living communities and service networks.
On the LGBT Advisory Committee to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, we established an Elders Workgroup last year and are continuing to actively pursue addressing the needs of our aging community. For example, we hosted a panel on ageism, adultism, and intergenerational connections last fall. Another panel on LGBT elder issues is in the planning stages for January, to be held at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. We continue to work with other stakeholders, such as the San Francisco Commission on Aging and Adult Services, where we are seeking to establish a more permanent LGBT Advisory Committee specific to that group, and San Francisco-based Openhouse, that aggressively advocates for LGBT elders, because the dialogue must continue and we must all engage with it. The HRC LGBT Advisory Committee is currently preparing to begin recruitment for new members to continue on with the work next year, and all members of our community are encouraged to participate and learn more.
We all know that the general U.S. population is growing older, and many of the first boomers (1946-1964) are now in their 60s. LGBT baby boomers will soon reach a critical mass. The need for cost-effective building programs for LGBT elder housing communities and the need for affordable housing and health care will only grow more critical, too. If we set up the models for this now, we put in place a belief system that acknowledges LGBT elders, and from which we can only grow and learn and be enriched over time.
Focusing attention in the LGBT community on the needs of elders will help make the LGBT community at large more intergenerational, by reaching out to and involving younger members of our communities – and that is a good and necessary thing. The kitchen table wisdom of passing stories down from generation to generation has always been an invaluable tool for creating LGBT identities. Facilitating systems that keep LGBT elders visible, viable, and accessible will enable our stories to be passed down. This is not a little thing. Take away our stories and you take away our history and our hope. All LGBT baby boomers remember some feelings of isolation, confusion, even despair as youths, coming of age in a culture not nearly ready to acknowledge them. Coming out of the closet can be one of the most difficult, yet one of the most defining and positively affirming experiences, to many if not most LGBT people.
Aging LGBT men and women often fear discrimination and even abuse in mainstream health care facilities and may even have to go back into the closet; to hide and live in fear again. Why structure a community where you must return to the closet as an LGBT senior – where LGBT elders return to the shadows and are no longer fully integrated into the larger LGBT community? Everyone suffers if that happens.
The needs of LGBT elders are not being addressed or met by the general society or in the mainstream political arena. LGBT elders have specific housing and health care needs, and these could range from issues of trust with health care providers and landlords to lifestyle choices and accessing needed services. Many topics about aging, such as long-term care options, are still discussed in whispers or in private; the dialogue on ageism is not a favorite topic for anyone, LGBT or straight.
Even in these tight economic times, establishing models for building strong LGBT elder communities within our larger communities, and for acknowledging our elders, is critical. Just one example of how a model program can have positive and lasting ramifications is evidenced in how San Francisco initiated health care models for AIDS prevention and treatment 30 years ago – these models have been studied and adopted by other cities across the country.
Attention to meeting the needs of LGBT elders, especially housing and health care, is the next logical step in creating our collective identities. LGBT baby boomers have much experience in creating things. We boomers created as we went along, fashioning ideologies and communities here and there, post-Stonewall (1969), and connecting them over time and distances. LGBT baby boomers literally created neighborhoods that served as safety zones in virtually all U.S. cities. We conceptualized the LGBT press, newspapers and magazines. Circuit parties, LGBT cruises, LGBT businesses, fashion, music, movies and culture are all imagined efforts and products of the LGBT boomer generation. LGBT politics and literature were richly enhanced and highlighted by boomers too. Every LGBT generation has benefited from what baby boomers have planned for, hoped for, and devised.
All the progress and inroads made in establishing LGBT identities and communities, in essence, now ride on how we acknowledge and administer to the housing and healthcare needs of LGBT elders. It is the final imprint on a lasting LGBT participation and leadership in our society and our culture. If we don't do this, who will? We should do this because we can do it. It is our duty. It should be our legacy.
Ray Rudolph is chair of the Elder Issues Subcommittee of the LGBT Advisory Committee to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. He is also a volunteer for Openhouse. He is retired from UCSF, where he was graduate program director in medical sociology, and is a resident of San Francisco for over 35 years.