Improving the housing experience for older LGBTQ+ people

Last year, I was watching a makeover episode of Drag Race Spain, as you do if you are an avid Drag Race fan who also speaks Spanish. The guests who were receiving their drag makeovers were people from an organisation called Fundacion 26 de Diciembre in Madrid, who work with older LGBTQ+ people, providing care, training, varied projects and activities, and who mentioned that they are opening the first ‘residence’ for older LGBTQ+ people in Spain.

‘Residence’ indicates a building for older people more along the lines of a care home than an Independent Living model. Social housing is delivered very differently in different countries depending on various social and political influences in the country. A Google search later and a deep dive into their website showed me that there are a number of similarities between Fundacion 26 de Diciembre (FVD for short), the plans for the residence and the work I am involved with as Head of Independent Living at Great Places Housing Group in Manchester. We are working with Manchester City Council, LGBT Foundation and the Community Steering Group (a volunteer group of members of the older LGBTQ community and local community) to develop the first purpose-built LGBTQ+ majority Extra Care scheme in the UK. I got in touch with FVD and filed away a plan to visit ‘next time I was in Madrid’ (I lived there when I was a student, and have visited many times since, and have been planning to visit since I couldn’t go in 2020 due to Covid).

Our work on co-designing the LGBTQ+ Extra Care scheme in Manchester continued, including hearing about other projects in different countries, as well as Tonic in London. In the Autumn of 2023, I was reminded of the Churchill Fellowship and enquired about the deadline for applications, which was around that time. At that point I didn’t think it would be a possibility as I haven’t travelled abroad since developing mobility issues due to Multiple Sclerosis and travelling alone didn’t feel like an option for me, but then I learned that the Churchill Fellowship provide funding for companions to travel with Fellows with a disability, and an idea took shape for a project.

An application process, interview and a couple of revisions of my plans later, and I found out in June that I had been awarded a Churchill Fellowship for 2024. I received funding to visit FVD in Madrid, as well as organisations providing LGBTQ+ specific housing in Lyon, France and Berlin, Germany, and to carry out online study with organisations in Sweden and the USA, and I have recently started my Fellowship travels.

By meeting with organisations across Europe and the USA, I am learning about good practice, challenges, and innovative ideas for providing care and housing for older LGBTQ+ people. Due to variations in housing and care provision in different countries, I hope that these insights will help me to ‘think outside the box’ of what is possible when working outside of the funding, planning, and commissioning structures we have here in the UK. However, most of all, I want to speak with people with lived experience of these schemes, learn about why they chose to move to them and their advice for developing similar projects in the UK. The differences in LGBTQ+ rights and histories, in different societies in each of these countries, is also of huge interest to me.

As part of a Churchill Fellowship, Fellows are required to produce a report at the end of their learning period. My initial intention was to produce a guide to co-producing specialist schemes, but I am now leaning towards a guide improving the experience of all older LGBTQ+ older people in housing and care settings, as I feel this may have a wider impact.

A brilliant benefit of the Churchill Fellowship is that it is an investment in the individual Fellows as potential changemakers. The whole ethos is that by funding Fellows to travel and learn, they will bring that learning back to the UK and influence change here. I have already been lucky to connect with lots of other fellows from 2024 and previous years, and the wealth of knowledge and learning in a huge range of topics, many of which are relevant to other areas of housing, is incredible.

This blog was originally published on HQ Network and has since been updated for our audience.