Now, he’s among the charter residents moving into the newly opened Town Hall development in Chicago, one of the first affordable, LGBT-friendly housing communities for the elderly.

Lund, who came out during the AIDS epidemic and lost his job of 15 years in the early 1980s, said this feels like home.

“This feel likes home. As you get older, it just feels more comfortable to be around people who understand and share your background. It’s also nice not to have worry about letting something slip out.”

As lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people age, cities and LGBT advocates are planning on how to deal with the needs of a generation that came out of the closet in complicated times. Perhaps the most sensitive issue for older gays and lesbians is housing discrimination. LGBT advocates also lament that the country’s elderly-care services haven’t evolved as quickly as the general population.

With the opening of Town Hall, which had more than 400 applicants for 79 studio and one-bedroom apartments, Chicago became the third city in the USA since 2013 to open housing catering to low-income LGBT people.
Similar housing developments in Minneapolis and Philadelphia also received far more applicants than they could accommodate.

Two more LGBT-friendly projects for low-income older people are in the pipeline for San Francisco and Los Angeles, which opened the first such development in 2007.