A new wave of LGBTQ+ housing is coming to the UK amid concerns about the ‘deadliest rise’ in homophobic attacks in a decade.
London has already seen its first residential hub for elderly members of the LGBTQ+ community opening up, following a £3million grant from city mayor, Sadiq Khan.
The fancy apartment block, built by Tonic Housing, overlooks Westminster and is a stone’s throwaway from Vauxhall, Waterloo and Tate Britain.
Over the summer, another group – First Brick Housing – received backing for its plan to build homes for ‘marginalised’ gay Londoners to ensure LGBTQ+ people are ‘free from oppression’, with City Hall stumping up £5,000 towards it.
Meanwhile, in Manchester, a proposal to construct a purpose-built, LGBTQ+ majority housing site for the over-55s was unveiled this week, in what city leaders and activists hailed as a ‘landmark’ scheme.
Critics have accused supporters of the new schemes of ‘virtue-signalling causes based on fashion and not need’. But campaigners insist the need has never been greater and comes amid a worrying surge in homophobic attacks.
A new wave of LGBTQ+ housing is coming to the UK amid concerns about the ‘deadliest rise’ in homophobic attacks in a decade. Pictured are members of the Tonic Housing Association, which has opened up a new LGBTQ+ retirement block in London
London has already seen its first residential block for elderly members of the LGBTQ+ community opening up (pictured)
Plans were revealed earlier this week for a new LGBTQ+ majority extra care housing scheme in Manchester
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation are up by 112 per cent in the last five years, with Home Office statistics finding homophobic hate crimes ballooned by 41 per cent in 2022.
It was branded the ‘deadliest’ rise in violence against gay people in a decade, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe).
Meanwhile, the recent report ‘No Place Like Home?’ – which surveyed and spoke to 260 LGBTQ residents – found that 32 per cent felt their neighbourhood was not a safe place to live in as an LGBTQ person.
While in 2020 a survey by Tonic of 624 LGBTQ+ Londoners over 50, found 56 per cent would favour living in an LGBTQ retirement community compared to just one per cent who would consider moving to general retirement scheme.
At the Tonic accommodation hub in the capital, residents there say they feel safer being in an ‘affirmative community’ together with other LGBTQ+ people.
Retired nurse Ong Chek Min was one of the building’s first residents, having swapped west London for SE1 in February 2022, amid fears he and his partner could face discrimination elsewhere.
‘My partner, Tim, and I talked a lot about where we might spend our later years,’ Min told the Guardian. ‘We knew we wanted to find somewhere LGBT-friendly, where we wouldn’t have to worry about discrimination and bullying.’
The Home Office says the increased debate of ‘transgender issues’ could be behind the surge in offences, while campaign groups put it down to an boom in extreme minority views since the lockdowns.
‘Attacks on LGBTI people with a conscious and deliberate will to kill and injure have increased to unprecedented levels,’ a recent report by ILGA claimed, pointing to the recent terror attacks at LGBTQ+ venues in Norway and Slovakia in 2022, which left four people dead and 22 injured.
Residents living at the LGBTQ+ retirement accommodation site in London are pictured
‘We have been saying for years now that hate speech in all its forms translates into actual physical violence. This phenomenon is not only in countries where hate speech is rife, but also in countries where it is widely believed that LGBTI people are progressively accepted,’ added Evelyne Paradis, ILGA-Europe’s executive director.
London’s LGBTQ+ community have warned the scale of persecution has reached levels not seen in more than two decades.
‘It’s going back to what it was in the 1990s,’ one owner of an LGBTQ+ venue in Soho, who has seen an rise in customers being harassed in recent months, told the Evening Standard.
‘We shouldn’t be treated like second-class citizens,’ added Robbie de Santos, 38, director of external affairs for the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, who was the victim of a homophobic hate crime himself 19 years ago.
First Brick Housing said it aimed to create new accommodation to support ‘marginalised’ Londoners and provide homes specifically for LGBTQ+ people to ensure they are ‘free from oppression’
As well as having the backing of Mr Khan’s office, the bid also has the support of Greenpeace.
A description of the First Brick Housing project in a breakdown of City Hall funding provides the summary: ‘Homes for marginalised LGBTQ+ Londoners.
Project that seeks to provide homes where this community can live safely and free of oppression.
The extra care housing development will see 120 flats built for people aged 55 and over on the vacant site of Spire Hospital in Whalley Range, Manchester (pictured)
First Brick’s website claims there is ‘systemic inequality’ in housing for LGBTQ+ people, with housing in general found to be less safe for transgender individuals.
The group’s mission statement says: ‘What connects us is the feeling that something isn’t quite right about the housing that is currently on offer.
‘That the homes we live in weren’t made for us, weren’t designed by us and weren’t the place we wanted to call home.’
It adds: ‘By being an LGBTQ+ housing provider who understands our community from our own lived experience, we hope our community won’t need to self-censor their homes.’
It’s bid was supported by the Mayor of London’s Building Strong Communities Fund. But use of public cash to support the effort has led to criticism from some quarters.
Howard Cox Lindon of Reform UK, Mr Khan’s London mayoral rival, said his opponent’s regime of the mayor ‘dishes out cash to virtue-signalling causes based on fashion not on need.’
‘If we go down the route of each identity group getting its own housing, we will see a more divided society,’ he told the Telegraph.
In Manchester, extra care housing development has been proposed which will see 120 flats built on the vacant site of Spire Hospital in Whalley Range.
The ground-breaking proposal has been revealed by Great Places Housing Group, which plans to build two new apartment blocks on the demolished hospital plot.
A public consultation meeting is set to take place on January 12 between 2pm and 8pm at the site in Russell Road and again from midday to 2pm the following day. People have until March 8 to give their views.
