Colleen Darraugh

Coalition for Aging LGBT releasing report grading 17 senior living facilities

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Coalition for Aging LGBT is set to release its first report on LGBT-friendly senior housing in North Texas. The report includes ratings on 17 senior facilities in the area’s four largest counties.

This project was prompted by the coalition’s survey of the LGBT community regarding concerns surrounding the issue of aging. The most pressing concern from those responding was housing.

Coalition volunteer Robert Emery had been working on creating an LGBT senior residence since 2004. But, he said, he dropped that idea a year ago when he saw the survey results. Overwhelmingly, the survey found, people don’t care about being in exclusively LGBT facilities; they just want housing that’s welcoming.

Brian Price is the chair of the Coalition’s housing committee. He traveled to Portland to talk to that city’s chapter of SAGE. SAGE is the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to serving LGBT seniors. Price said Portland was the only other city he found that had done something similar to what the DFW coalition wanted to do, in terms of surveying housing for seniors to find those welcoming to LGBT people. Based on Portland’s matrix, the DFW Coalition found 17 senior facilities located across Dallas, Collin, Tarrant and Denton counties that were interested in participating.

In the Coalition’s report, Section A rates the facilities on inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in their employment policies and their residents’ bill of rights. Section B includes resident procedures and forms.

One of the questions on the questionnaire sent to participating senior living facilities was, “Do intake forms provide an option for unmarried couples to identify their status?” Another was, “Are preferred pronouns used?”

Section C includes outreach and marketing questions, and facilities get points for having LGBT-themed programming. Section D asks if the staff has received competency training on LGBT issues in the past year.

Price said they quickly found that none of the interested facilities had done any competency training for their employees on LGBT issues. So the coalition offered a program provided by the Rev. Colleen Darraugh.

“We make the assumption not everyone is on the same page,” Darraugh said, explaining that her training starts with basic information, like what the acronym “LGBT” actually stands for, and the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

Because many seniors in assisted living or nursing care fear mistreatment in a facility, they often go into the closet, and “That adds to feelings of isolation,” Darraugh said.

She said one of the things she heard in many of the facilities she trained was that employees treat everyone the same. But, she explained to them, that’s not necessarily good if everyone is being treated as if they’re heterosexual.

In other cases, she said, janitorial staff asked why they had to go through this training along with nurses or administrative staff. Darraugh explained that in those cases, they still had interaction with residents, even if that interaction was just saying “hi” in the hallway. In those cases, she said, everyone should be treated the same.

Brian Price

Price said the new guide rated facilities on their LGBT housing competency rather than on their amenities. He said the facilities his committee found had champions already working there who were delighted the group was offering the training and ratings.

Each year, the facilities will be rated again, and Price said he hopes additional locations will continually be added. But that will involve additional volunteers, since approving the facilities required multiple visits to each one.

Smaller, privately-owned homes could add nondiscrimination to their policies just by going online and adding the wording to their websites, Price said. But for those owned by corporations, it was a longer process. The new wording had to approved by a board before it could be added to printed and online material.

Training took at least one more visit, and for larger facilities, several sessions more.

Price said the Coalition is also offering programming the facilities can offer residents. He said the Coalition prefers to see facilities offering such programming on site rather than just providing transportation to the Resource Center for an event or to Gaybingo or a Turtle Creek Chorale concert.

On-site programming could include showing a movie and following up with a discussion, facilitated by a Coalition volunteer, on a gay character or theme in the film.

As more LGBT people age, the need for LGBT-competent senior housing will continue to grow, Price stressed. According to the Census Bureau, more than 194,000 lesbians and gays over the age of 45 live in Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton counties.

There are no estimates on the number of transgender people living in North Texas because no questions were asked on the last census from which information could be extrapolated. But if the current estimate is accurate, about three-quarters of 1 percent of the general population are transgender. That translates to more than 50,000 trans people in North Texas.

Price said the report will be printed and go online on Dec. 18.

Portland released a pamphlet summarizing its results. In its first year, that pamphlet included nine facilities.

Price said he hoped at first that the North Texas report would include one facility to use as a model. Then the responses started pouring in, and he upped his goal to 5.

After all was said and done though, he report actually includes 17 facilities. And the DFW report won’t be a pamphlet; in typical bigger-and-better-Dallas style, the full-color printed report is 80 pages.

Anyone who would like to volunteer, contact Coalition for Aging LGBT through it’s website, CFA.lgbt.