The Purple Elephant in the Room

I’ve always had a certain amount of concern about my later years. Who’s going to take care of me?  Where will I live?  What will growing old be like?  After I came out, that concern took on a different dimension.  Would I be accepted?  What will it be like to be a 50+ gay person? 

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been fascinated with the RainbowVision Properties mission since I first heard about the company last year. RainbowVision is building the nation’s first resort retirement communities for LGBT people and their straight friends. In June 2006, they opened their first community in Santa Fe, and they are currently planning their second in Palm Springs.

As gay people, we rarely want to talk about getting older. We’re the first ones in line to buy facial care products, we work out, we eat right, etc.  But we don’t want to address that big purple elephant in the room: our older gay selves.

RainbowVision hired FH Out Front as their agency of record in August 2006. In the months since we began our partnership, our team has had a great time addressing these questions as we’ve worked with the RainbowVision team to convey the “life made easy” concept that is central to their approach.

I recently asked Joy Silver, president and CEO of RainbowVision Properties, Inc. to talk about delivering the RainbowVision message and the ways in which they address the purple elephant in the room:

Ben Finzel: I was immediately taken with the idea of a resort retirement community by, for and with gay people and their straight friends. RainbowVision seems like such a great idea. Do you think everyone gets it right away or is there still some reluctance on the part of some people in our community to recognize the benefits of what you're doing?

Joy Silver: The benefits of what RainbowVision has to offer are immediately understood by anyone in our population who has felt what it is like to be an outsider, as well as by those of us who have had the experience of being in places where we seem to be in the majority, or at least the visible minority, like Provincetown or San Francisco or in New York’s West Village. The reluctance that we have encountered is not about the concept or the reality of what RainbowVision is, but about the challenge of accepting that we are all aging.  No one seems ready to age, per se, but all of us are ready to live somewhere where life is made easy.

Ben Finzel: Aging in our community is very often the “purple elephant” in the room that we gays and lesbians don't want to acknowledge. How have you tackled the challenge of talking about the second fifty years of our lives in a way that's both honest and fun?

Joy Silver: To accept aging is a step towards maturity, and to be able to find ways to describe our experience is an experimental stage in concept, communication and language that we are all involved in. Our population parallels the Baby Boomer Generation with this moment of acceptance in history - we have just gotten there ahead of the curve due to one very important factor. Both our generations, The Mature (almost 20 % of the US population) and The Baby Boomers (almost 30%) of the population are self-referring, or make direct decisions as to where we will be in the second fifty years of our lives, vs. the mainstream, where frailer, more compromised adults may be referred in to communities by caretakers or family members. We are charting new territory, and setting trends as pioneers for the aging experience much the same way we have done so for fashion, design, music and literature. RainbowVision is our chance to Envision Our Future Ourselves, and that is a tremendous step in self determination that generations before us never had.

Tomorrow: more from Joy Silver on working with RainbowVision spokesperson Billie Jean King and why Santa Fe is so welcoming to gays and lesbians.

Comments

[Ami Icanberry]

Another great article ont he state of LGBT retirement and the future of gay seniors!

Lesbian and Gay Retirement Communities
EMail This Article To A Friend March 14th, 2007 by Lara Belonogoff
In 1969, the Stonewall Riots saw Manhattan’s West Village engulfed in brutality—and many historians mark the events as the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States. And it was in November of 1978 that Harvey Milk, the San Francisco gay rights advocate, was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone. The ensuing White Night Riots were also a marker of the changes taking place as members of the gay community made their voices heard. Many of the men and women who marched and fought in these demonstrations are now seeing silver hairs on their heads and wondering where they will be spending their retirement years. And, it seems these seniors are carving out a niche for themselves in retirement the same way they had to in society decades ago—by building communities in which to support and nurture each other.

Here in the Bay Area this new trend in senior housing is being celebrated with last week’s opening of the Barbary Lane Communities at Lake Merritt in Oakland. The independent living community is one of a handful that is geared towards the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community. In many ways it is no surprise that the progressive and welcoming Bay Area is one of the handful of locations to house such a community; however, many more are popping up all over America, including some decidedly “red” states.

Gay seniors often face certain issues more commonly than their straight counterparts. Namely, members of the LGBT community are less likely to have adult children to care for them. There is also the issue that some have been ostracized by family members, meaning that overseeing and planning for their care sits squarely on their own shoulders. Also many states, counties or cities do not have domestic partner laws, ensuring gay couples face more red tape in securing benefits for their partners. Even in the gay community, senior-related issues are still relatively unexamined as gay rights efforts have traditionally been youth focused.

Perhaps most importantly, the value of these communities is exactly the same as any type of senior housing—it comes down to making a place where people feel welcome and happy to live. Many in the LGBT community feel that their golden years is no time to be crawling back into the proverbial closet, which many feel is what would happen if they lived in any other type of community. And, living in a place where specific needs and life experiences will be understood is important to all seniors regardless of sexual orientation.

The first LGBT communities were built in the late 1990s and the industry is still nascent. These communities offer independent living and occasionally assisted living, but very few also have skilled nursing care. In the LGBT senior housing market there are a few development companies, such as RainbowVision, but some larger companies known already in the long-term care industry have now joined in. Aegis Senior Living, a well-known West Coast assisted living management company, is currently building a LGBT senior community in Santa Rosa, California. All these companies hope to tap into a market whose potential hasn’t been fully explored. The majority of LGBT senior communities are clustered in states such as Arizona, New Mexico and Florida. Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Palm Springs also are popular sites. (Across the pond, LGBT retirement communities have sprung up in both Amsterdam and Stockholm.) As the long-term care industry grows it should be prove interesting to watch how these communities expand and hopefully flourish.

To read more about LGBT retirement, or to learn about today's most important senior care issues, check out www.gilbertguide.com/blog

[mel]

My mom is a baby boomer and she is 60 years old and puts money away every month to have a nurse come into her home when she can’t take care of herself anymore. At first I thought it was wasted money…but not so much anymore. I feel it is necessary to start putting money away for long term health care...sooner than later. What are Baby Boomers to do, due to the shortage in Nursing care?
See article on Dailycents.com at http://blogs.dailycents.com/?p=803

[Ben Finzel]

Hello Ami and Mel. Thank you for your comments and for providing our readers with other resources on this topic. I hope you'll keep reading and commenting.