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L E T T E R F R OM T HE E D I T OR
If You Want Diverse, Inclusive
Senior Housing, SAGE Showed the Way
SAGE and Stonewall House staff along with new residents following the December 17 ribbon-cutting.
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
When SAGE — Advocacy
and Services for
LGBT Seniors — held
a ribbon-cutting ceremony
on December 17 to open the
city’s fi rst LGBTQ-friendly affordable
senior housing facility, Brooklyn Borough
President Eric Adams caught
the audience by surprise with some
heated words raising questions about
the project’s commitment to diversity
and inclusion on property shared
with NYCHA’s Ingersoll Houses.
Despite Adams’ unrestrained
rhetoric — which made reference
to rodents in the NYCHA buildings
and “beautiful fl oors” in the new
Stonewall House, to the potential
for “disruptive” “incidents,” and even
to “arrogance” and to slavery — his
comments, which were recorded,
did not surface in the media until
the New York Post reported them on
Christmas Day, more than a week after
he uttered them.
Once the comments, which the
Post characterized as “a bizarre and
incendiary rant,” surfaced, Adams
moved to clarify what his concerns
were — and several times underscored
that he was not indifferent to
the needs of LGBTQ seniors.
Though his offi ce did not respond
to Gay City News’ December 26 request
for comment, the same day he
told Gothamist.com , “We should pull
people from the community… The
expectation is not to build two cities
within NYCHA.”
On Twitter, the borough president
explained, “As I walked into the
KAMILA HARRIS
Stonewall House ribbon cutting, several
community residents voiced their
concerns to me over a nice building
built on NYCHA property while their
public housing remains neglected.
They also shared the desire to see a
greater share of LGBTQ+ people of
color. The number one crisis in the
community where Stonewall House
sits is affordable housing and gentrifi
cation. I want all of our friends and
allies to hear this and be part of the
solution. We worked together on marriage
equality, on raising the age for
RHY Runaway and Homeless Youth
youth. We must do so on this too.”
All of these goals — and most especially
the responsibility of the LGBTQ
community to work in coalition with
communities of color and economically
disadvantaged New Yorkers —
are laudable.
The problem with Adams’ critique
— leaving aside his intemperate tone
at a moment when several hundred
new residents were arriving at Stonewall
House — is that all of his goals
refl ect values that SAGE worked hard
and successfully to honor.
Though the building is designed to
be affi rming for LGBTQ seniors and
provide them, and other residents
and neighbors, with appropriate social
services, there is no requirement
that residents identify that way —
and SAGE estimates that less than
60 percent do so.
All of the residents must meet the
requirement that their incomes not
exceed 50 percent of the area’s median
income, so the building is fully
affordable and serves New Yorkers
of limited means. More than threequarters
of the new arrivals at Stonewall
House are people of color, 25 percent
of the 145 units were set aside for
New Yorkers who have experienced
homelessness, and an additional 54
were reserved for NYCHA residents
or those on the waiting list for public
housing. The social services provided
at the SAGE Center on the building’s
fi rst fl oor — again, though they are
intended to be affi rming of the LGBTQ
residents — are available to all
those who live at Stonewall House as
well as to residents from the neighboring
community.
Adams may quibble with the NYCHA/
homeless set-aside percentages
— though they certainly seem
reasonable, accounting for 62 percent
of all units — but he has been
in the loop as this project developed
over several years and certainly could
have pressed that point earlier.
To suggest, however, that the demographics
of Stonewall House and
those of the Ingersoll Houses in some
meaningful way represent “two cities”
is simply not an accurate description
of this picture. And it is ridiculous to
assert that “beautiful fl oors” in a new
construction building for low-income
seniors represent gentrifi cation in
Fort Greene.
Plenty of luxury buildings in and
near Fort Greene have sprouted up in
the years that Adams has served as
borough president — and that gentrifi
cation and the attendant displacement
should cause concern. So too
should the inexcusable neglect of NYCHA,
which has allowed dangerously
unhealthy conditions to persist for
too many public housing residents.
But Stonewall House is not part
of those problems. In fact, it is part
of the solution — admittedly a small
one, with only 145 units, but it defi -
nitely points in the right direction.
SAGE’s initiative in Fort Greene and
another one ready to go online early
in 2020 in the East Tremont section
of the Bronx are not the nation’s fi rst
LGBTQ-friendly senior housing developments.
The two projects, however,
distinguish themselves from their
predecessors in other cities that were
typically sited in their “gayborhoods,”
largely white, relatively affl uent com-
➤ SAGE SHOWS THE WAY, continued on p.15
January 2 - January 15, 2 14 020 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
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