SF Leaders Call for More LGBT Senior Housing

Community and political leaders used the official dedication ceremony for San Francisco's first senior housing complex aimed specifically for LGBT seniors to highlight the need for additional projects to be built.

"This building is not the end, it is the beginning," said Openhouse Executive Director Karyn Skultety, Ph.D. "Every LGBT elder deserves not only housing but a home where they feel loved."

The occasion last Thursday, March 23 publicly celebrated the opening of the Openhouse Community at 55 Laguna, 41 units of affordable senior housing on the edge of the city's gay Castro district built by Mercy Housing California and Openhouse, the main provider of LGBT aging services in San Francisco.

Twenty years ago the nonprofit's two founders, life partners Marcy Adelman, Ph.D., and Jeanette Gurevitch, who died in 2003, started the push to build housing affirming of LGBT seniors. They initially had launched what was then known as Rainbow Adult Community Housing in response to seeing friends lose their homes after being evicted or forced out of their apartments.

"I am completely overwhelmed," Adelman said during last week's ceremony. "This is the most amazing day of my life."

Also dedicated last week was Openhouse's new, permanent offices at 65 Laguna Street, known as the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center due to a $1 million donation from the foundation of the late Bay Area Reporter founding publisher.

"Bob Ross used to talk about the dream of having a campus, a project where older LGBT people could live with dignity and be who they are," said Thomas E. Horn, president of the Bob Ross Foundation and publisher emeritus of the B.A.R. "He would be thrilled to know that his philanthropy was used to form a piece of the pie that made it all happen."

Due to anti-discrimination laws, Openhouse could not set aside the $40 million development's units solely for LGBT seniors. Nonetheless, close to 70 percent of the residents now living in the repurposed Richardson Hall, a former college building at 55 Laguna Street, identify as LGBT.

One such resident is Richard Smallcomb, 63, a gay man now living in one of the building's one-bedroom apartments with his dog Dexter, a basset hound and corgi mix. He moved from the assisted living facility where he had been living just three blocks away after landing the number 11 spot in the lottery used to choose most of the 55 Laguna residents. (A city program selected the residents for eight units set aside for seniors at risk of homelessness living with HIV or AIDS, or dealing with substance abuse or mental health issues.)

"I am proud to live in an LGBT senior center," said Smallcomb, a Boston native who has lived in the city nearly 30 years and once attended classes at Richardson Hall in the 1980s. "I didn't think I would make it, but I am here."

Advocates are hoping to see the majority of units in the project's second building, which will consist of 79 units of affordable senior housing for people 65 and older, also go to LGBT seniors. Being built on what is now a surface parking lot next door to Richardson Hall, it is set to open in early 2019.

Mayor Ed Lee, after touring the renovated college building for the first time, told the several hundred people who had gathered to see it for themselves that it will allow LGBT seniors the ability to age with dignity.

"Perhaps a dignity you have not experienced in years past," said Lee, who also promised that his administration would work to build more such housing in the city. "I commit to you it will not take another five years. We will hurry up and get more of this done, not just here but throughout the city."

As of now, there has been no announcement from either City Hall or Openhouse that a second LGBT senior housing project is in the works.

In an emailed reply to the B.A.R., queer housing rights activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca called on the mayor and other city leaders to deliver on their promise and ensure any new housing is also affordable. He and fellow gay housing activist Brian Basinger had pushed Openhouse leaders and city officials to deliver a below-market-rate project at 55 Laguna, which at one point was to have been market-rate housing for LGBT seniors.

"If this project could be made 100 percent affordable - and believe me, it wasn't easy - then other 100 percent affordable projects can happen in the Castro," wrote Avicolli Mecca. "It's not an exaggeration to say that for seniors, housing is a life and death issue. Especially given the fact that several seniors have recently died or been hospitalized during or after their evictions."

He added that "it's imperative" for the city to address its housing crisis with additional 100 percent affordable developments for the LGBT community.

"Openhouse should not be the only LGBT senior housing project," wrote Avicolli Mecca. "It should be the first of many more to come, not only for seniors, but for youth, the homeless and others in our community who need affordable housing."