Gray and Gay? These Communities Want You

Gay retirement communities have attracted little notice and aroused little passion. One reason may be that those already operating are discreet and tend to be in areas where thriving gay and lesbian scenes are established.

One project, in downtown Hollywood, is to be built in the midst of the nation's largest urban redevelopment project after Times Square. The 103-unit project, which is being promoted partly by Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles, has collected $17.5 million in public funds, including $5 million from the city of Los Angeles as well as federal affordable-housing tax credits; just $1 million is coming from private sources. Construction is scheduled to begin in the fall, and nearly a third of the units will be for people who are HIV-positive, homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Like other projects, the Hollywood development is not officially limited to gays and lesbians, and so it violates no laws. But it will be attached to an explicitly gay community center, which will not apply for public funding, so there will be no question about the building's identity, backers say.

One project that did come under attack is a 157-acre planned retirement community for lesbians in Pecos, N.M. A local neighborhood association mounted a court challenge to the project, insisting it would deplete water supplies, drive up taxes, and add to traffic and pollution. But the development, known as Birds of a Feather, prevailed in the New Mexico Supreme Court at the start of this year; the developers hope to begin construction within months.

The proliferation of gay and lesbian retirement communities fits a pattern of what social observers say is the creeping atomization of America -- people of similar interests, backgrounds, and social and political leanings clustering together, opting out of more diverse living arrangements because they are comfortable mainly with their own.

It also responds to what gays in their fifties and older, many of them closeted, scorned or ostracized for years, describe as an acute need. As a group, they have far fewer children than their peers and, in some cases, more strained ties with their families. In the absence of relatives, they say, what they badly need in their sunset years, especially as their health deteriorates, are sympathetic neighbors who share jokes, taste, stories, and bonds of understanding and tolerance.

"Let's say you've been involved with your partner for 30 years and he dies," Silver said. "Where will you go to find other partners or be in a social circle where you'll be comfortable? It's almost like an ethnicity -- you want to be in a place where you won't always be in the minority."

The Palms had 21 villas when it opened in 1998; a second phase is under construction to add an additional 34 homes, including two- and three-bedroom condominiums selling for $200,000 to $250,000. About 80 percent of the residents at the Palms are 55 or older. Most are retired couples, many of whom have been together for a decade or more.

Some of them say they lived comfortably, even prominently, among heterosexuals for years; others describe strained or occasionally hostile relations -- teenagers who yelled from passing cars, neighbors who fell silent. Many said they came to the Palms partly from fear that conventional retirement communities would replicate the cliquishness and homophobia they encountered in high school.

All agreed that they have never felt so accepted, embraced and at ease as they do at the Palms. Here, they say, their days are filled with potluck dinners, outings to concerts and theater, and easy friendships.

"I've never felt this free," said Linda Lee, 62, a licensed chiropractor who moved to the Palms from Atlanta in 1998 with her longtime partner, Mary Lynah, who is a registered nurse. "If I want to kiss Mary in the middle of the street, I can kiss her in the middle of the street without the fear of retribution."

Kobee and Usack, the pair from Maryland, are an unusual couple in several ways, but also in some ways typical for the Palms. For years their professional lives were nearly as veiled as their personal lives. Both had top security clearances. Both were married. Both had kids. Both eventually divorced their wives.

Neither told co-workers he was gay until after he retired. And years after they began living together, Kobee's son married Usack's daughter.

They led active lives in Maryland, leading their Unitarian church, attending theater and ballet in Washington and opera in Baltimore. But their neighborhood, near Fort Meade, was conservative and full of military families; neither felt he could hang a rainbow flag from the window or touch his partner walking down the street. And when they looked into moving to a retirement community near Washington, they sensed a coldness from residents.

When the Palms began its expansion last year, they were among the first to buy. And they couldn't be happier, they said.

"It's nice to be able to talk to people who understand things we've had to suppress -- the problems you've had with families, the years of keeping things hidden," Kobee said. "They're going to carry me out of here."