For 20 years Mar­ti Smith lived in an apart­ment in a fair­ly upscale neigh­bor­hood on the north side of Chica­go. Smith loved her home—it was afford­able, had three bed­rooms, and a back­yard where she could gar­den. Her land­lord even allowed her to mow the lawn and shov­el snow in order to keep the rent down. But over the years, the area began to change and home prices increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for locals—especially those on fixed incomes—to find hous­ing they could afford.

The apart­ment build­ing where Smith lived was even­tu­al­ly sold, and Smith, who at the time was in her late 60s and retired, had to find some­place else to call home. A self-described “card-car­ry­ing les­bian,” Smith knew it was­n’t going to be easy to find a place where she could live com­fort­ably and be her­self, with­out judg­ment. As luck would have it, Chicago’s first LGBTQ-wel­com­ing, 100 per­cent afford­able hous­ing res­i­dence was accept­ing appli­ca­tions. Town Hall Apart­ments, a 79-unit build­ing, opened in 2014 and Smith has been liv­ing there ever since.

While she miss­es her gar­den, and she tends to be a per­son who sees her glass half emp­ty, Smith knows she’s one of the lucky ones. LGBTQ seniors are far more like­ly to face pover­ty and home­less­ness because of discrimination—48 per­cent of old­er same-sex cou­ples have expe­ri­enced dis­crim­i­na­tion when seek­ing hous­ing, accord­ing to a 2014 Equal Rights Cen­ter study. And due to some­times-ram­pant homo­pho­bia in retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, it’s not uncom­mon for LGBTQ elders to hide their sex­u­al pref­er­ence and gen­der iden­ti­ties, Smith says. Those set­tings con­tribute to social iso­la­tion, which is dead­ly.

The LGBTQ senior population—estimated at 3 mil­lion strong in the U.S.—have con­tend­ed with a life­time of insuf­fi­cient legal pro­tec­tions, and racial and gen­der dis­par­i­ties. LGBTQ old­er adults also expe­ri­ence seri­ous health issues, like high­er blood pres­sure rates and ear­li­er onset of dis­abil­i­ties, accord­ing to a report by the Kaiser Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion.

And the com­mu­ni­ty is only grow­ing. It’s expect­ed that the LBGT senior pop­u­la­tion will grow to 7 million—double the size of Chicago—by 2030.

In recent years, LGBT-friend­ly afford­able hous­ing res­i­dences like Town Hall Apart­ments have been pop­ping up in major cities across the country—from Philadel­phia to San Fran­cis­co. At present there are about 12 devel­op­ments in the U.S. that account for almost 1,100 units of afford­able hous­ing geared toward LGBTQ elders, accord­ing to SAGE, an advo­ca­cy and ser­vices orga­ni­za­tion for LGBTQ elders. Six oth­er devel­op­ments on the hori­zon are expect­ed to have 300-plus units, and sev­er­al more of these types of devel­op­ments are in the ear­ly to mid-plan­ning stages.

How are these units get­ting built, and what are the obsta­cles to build­ing more?

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