Creating Welcoming Communities for LGBTQ Elders

This article originally appeared in Global Ageing Network.

Philippe Saad, an architect and co-founder for LGBTQ Senior Housing in Boston, MA, is a proponent of inclusive communities. 

As an architect with the Boston, MA firm, DiMella Shaffer, for more than 20 years, Philippe Saad has designed many buildings which have become the foundations of communities, but there’s one project in particular that has engaged him both professionally and personally.

Saad is co-founder and a vice president of the board for LGBTQ Senior Housing, which has within its mission “to facilitate access to welcoming, safe and affordable housing for low-income LGBTQ seniors, including through a formal role in the development of such housing.” The Pryde, the first LGBTQ affirming and affordable housing development in New England, located in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, celebrated its second anniversary in June.

“It is a beautiful community. The way we went about it, when we were planning for the building, through early community outreach to the neighborhood of Hyde Park. We talked to local organizations and civic leaders. We presented to neighborhood civic organizations in schools, halls and at the YMCA. Our outreach created support for this idea in the neighborhood,” Saad said.

In 2019, following a bid process, LGBTQ Senior Housing, along with housing development partner Pennrose, was awarded the property that formerly housed the William Barton Rogers Middle School. DiMella Shaffer was the design partner on the building, which includes 74 apartments for seniors 62 and over.

One of the integral components of The Pryde is a community center, open and welcoming to everyone in the neighborhood.

“[During the community outreach], we received feedback and understood that Hyde Park was a neighborhood without a health center nor places where people could meet,” said Saad.

The Pryde houses a 10,000-square-foot LGBTQ Community Center, managed by LGBTQ Senior Housing. The center hosts events and activities such as political debates, educational and art classes, vaccine clinics and death cafés, which offer community members the chance to gather and talk about death and dying—according to Saad, one resident of The Pryde is a death doula. The community center has also hosted the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which has traveled around the world.

“The community center reinforces the need and value of having active programming for older adults,” said Saad. He noted that during the celebration of The Pryde’s second anniversary, a resident thanked Gretchen Van Ness, LGBTQ Senior Housing Executive Director and said that because of the programming, “you pull us out of our apartments and you don’t let us be alone.”

For Saad, his interest in creating inclusive communities like this one is both personal and professional. (LGBTQ Senior Housing is currently seeking a second Pryde building.) “As an aspiring architect 15 years ago, I began asking how I could support the older generations of my community. I identify as a gay man. So I said, where are LGBTQ older adults going to live as they age? That question led me to help create LGBTQ Senior Housing,” said Saad.

Designing Inclusive Communities

When it comes to designing housing for the senior population (DiMella Shaffer has designed other senior living projects throughout the United States and a new lifecare community, The Baldwin, in New Hampshire), Saad broadens the scope to include dementia-friendly spaces.

“Whether it’s a bus stop or a supermarket or a city hall, embedding dementia-friendly principles is very important,” he said. “So The Pryde, for example, has a good amount of dementia-friendly principles applied to the building although it’s independent living affordable housing. We use color, contrast, familiarity of objects and clarity of layouts to allow people to easily navigate their environment.”

Healthy communities are diverse communities, which includes diversity of age. “No matter how you frame groups of older adults, the 62-plus population is a diverse group of people — you have people who are 62 and people who are 90,” he said. “That is a large gap. They want different things.”

Speaking about The Baldwin lifecare community, Saad said it’s a pedestrian-friendly environment based on the principle of placemaking, a people-centered approach to urban planning.

“The building front is lined with amenities that open up onto the street to allow people to flow in and out. It’s next to a beer hall, a clinic and other amenities on the main streets,” he explained.

Allowing people from different parts of the neighborhood to spontaneously meet is a desirable feature of this type of community planning. “Sometimes I like to call them ‘collisions,’” said Saad. “Like when I meet my neighbor, I don’t plan for that, but it happens. And there’s some energy that comes out of a spontaneous conversation- ‘hey, how are you? what are you doing?’ [Creating] these relationships is what I think architecture and planning has the power to do.”

In April, Saad was a featured presenter for the Global Ageing Network Leadership program and spoke on “Supporting Diverse Elders.” When asked if there are any community housing projects around the world that have inspired him, Saad said, “I think the European Nordic countries have put more investment into this social model of housing that includes older adults with younger people, as well as dementia villages that are supportive.” He cited the successes of The Hogeweyk, a dementia village in the Netherlands as well as Village Landais Alzheimer in France.

Philippe Saad will be speaking on LGBTQ housing and diverse communities at the Global Ageing Network’s “Age-Readiness for the Global Community: A One-Day Summit” on October 24, prior to the LeadingAge Annual Meeting, Oct. 25-28 in Philadelphia, PA.

The summit will advance age-readiness across societies, envisioned as ensuring older persons have the supports they need, their voices are heard, and they can fully participate in community life. The summit will bring together experts from a range of disciplines including health, urban planning and environmental design, transportation, education, sports, entrepreneurship, government, providers, and technology to explore how integration across disciplines, spanning formal systems and everyday practice can support older adults to live well, be heard, and fully engage in community life.

Register now for the Global Ageing Network Summit. More information about the LeadingAge Annual Meeting is available here.