Housing Demand for Gay Seniors Climbs

By Alan Scher Zagier, Globe Correspondent

Graying gays and lesbians across the country know better. In Palmetto, home to the 24-villa Palms of Manasota, the nation's first gay retirement community, sales agents can barely keep up with the demand.

"There's a huge surge of interest," said Linda Flading, sales manager for Palms of Manasota. "I just went through 600 e-mails. They're coming from all over the country."

Created six years ago by a retired psychology professor from New York, the Florida development of 35 acres has manicured lawns, tile roofs, and screened patios. And plans for the project's second phase call for 40 additional villas, starting at $242,000. An assisted-living facility, swimming pool, and community center are also on the drawing board.

The development has emerged as a model for other efforts to tap into a lucrative slice of the aging baby boom market, estimated to be as large as 3 million.

In Santa Fe -- second only to San Francisco in the percentage of households headed by same-sex couples -- two gay-friendly retirement communities are slated for construction this year.

In Boston, a group of advocates for gay seniors is searching for property in the South End and Back Bay on which to build an urban alternative to the golf-and-beach retirement, said David Aronstein, president of Stonewall Communities.

Unlike the young and middle-aged gays and lesbians who grew up in more tolerant times, many gay seniors living in places such as Palms of Manasota come from a different era, Aronstein noted.

"For people in their 60s and 70s, when you think about various points in our history, they were in their 20s during the McCarthy era," he said. "They grew up experiencing not just subtle discrimination, but true oppression."

Traditional senior housing can be foreboding, if not inhospitable, for gays, say Aronstein and other supporters of gay retirement living.

In the Florida capital of Tallahassee, for example, a lesbian couple recently filed a fair-housing complaint after being twice rejected by a local retirement community the couple claim denied them housing based on their sexual orientation.

Charles Showard, an 82-year-old retired music professor, hails from a generation in which gays hid their true identities. Like several other Palms of Manasota residents, he was married with children before he told people he was gay.

More recently, he and longtime partner Terry Cox, 54, made sure to be discreet among their former neighbors in a St. Petersburg suburb. But "Here, if we want to go down the streets holding hands or showing affection, there's no problem," Showard said.

For John Kuen, 62, and partner Fred Hodges, 53, the move to Palms of Manasota after a decade living outside Atlanta meant a return to the extended community they cherished while living in San Francisco.

The couple said their housing choice is not so different from the decision by others to settle in an ethnic neighborhood or to move to a retirement community en masse with old friends from back home.

That support system is all the more vital for the aging, since many older gays and lesbians have strained relationships with their immediate families, said Aronstein. And unlike straight seniors, they often have no adult children to turn to for help. "Over the years, we've had to create our own families," he said. Like their heterosexual counterparts in temperate southwest Florida, residents of the 55-and-older community (one person in each couple can be younger) often find themselves busier in retirement. There are neighborhood dinner parties, trips to the theater, coffee confabs, and the simple rhythms of small-town living. Some continue to work part time or telecommute to their old jobs.

In a time-honored custom, neighbors exchange grocery bags stuffed with extra oranges, grapefruits, and other citrus fruits from their trees, not only with one another, but also with some residents of the adjacent mobile-home park.

"You buy one house, but you live in all of them," said Judy Newdom, 57, who with her partner, Val Filipski, 53, moved to Palmetto from Sharon, Mass., in 2000.

Reaction from the surrounding community has generally been positive, residents say. Vandals have struck on occasion, but targeted nearby homes as well, lessening concerns about homophobia.

Palms of Manasota, which is ungated, resembles countless other Florida retirement communities. Which is precisely the point, said Newdom.

"It's not like we're making love in the street. But we're OK being who we are," she said. "Basically, we're very boring. We do the same things as everyone else. We go to work, we come home, we cook dinner, we feed the cat, we clean the kitty litter."