Building Safe Choices 2020 Our Voices: ‘LGBT+ later life housing demand in London’

Tonic Living, Stonewall Housing and Opening Doors London (ODL) worked together to undertake action research to better understand the housing, care and support requirements of older LGBT+ people in London. We aimed to capture ‘the voice of the demand’ of older LGBT+ people.

There is a growing body of evidence highlighting the issues for LGBT+ people who are ageing in a heteronormative society, where people have felt they have had to ‘go back into the closet’ in order to have their housing and support needs met. There is however very little information collected on what housing, care and support older LGBT+ people need, want and can afford in their later life. So we co-designed this research with our community to find out.

We received 624 responses between February and April 2020, making this the largest survey of LGBT+ people over the age of 50 in London. We are very grateful to everyone who took the time to complete the survey either online, by post or in person before we had to cease our outreach work in March.

These are the headlines from the survey responses. We think these results are significant, with a clear demand for specific provision. A detailed report will be published in September, following input from focus groups.

We will continue to work together to make sure that LGBT+ affirming housing, care and support becomes available to meet this demand.