gayborhoods
New Gayborhoods
Rising Existing Gayborhoods &
New Hidden Gems
to Check Out
CANADA - Quebec
Montreal -
"The New NYC
a la Francais with
LatinX on Top"
Montreal - For savy LGBTQ community members, super LGBTQ-friendly Montreal has always been on many of their personal travel to spot,or places to retire in, but increasingly it is becoming the city of choice for LGBTQ immigrants worldwide and making this already cool place - even more trendy. Local LatinX LGBTQ from all over Latin America & USA is booming in numbers. New construction is everywhere, and some believe it will lead to an over construction period in the next couple of years where you might be able to find more affordabl top of the line apartments throughout the city. The city also offers renters one of Canada's best rent control protection. Montreal's Gay Village is well known and loved by many, but growing Montreal's LGBTQ community is visible in every neighborhood. If you have not been there yet, treat yourself to Montreal.
Canada - Quebec - Montreal
Val-David -
"An Arts & Sports Mountain Oasis"
"About 50 kilometers north of Montreal, and about 18 kilometers south from the world renoun ski resort of Mont-Tremblant, you will find the small village of Val-David.
A long time artist and sports colony that is increasingly attracting US and Canadian LGBTQ couples and families looking for country mountain second homes or Montreal commutable options - not only for its central and beautiful location in the Laurentian Mountains, but also for its historic "anti-development" bohemian attitude, resident artists population, local ski resorts, regional parks with a diverse offering of hiking/snowshoeing/crosscountry biking trails, its lakes and above all its attempt at preserving a simple way of life among nature"
USA - West Seattle, WA -
Alki Beach Park -
"The Way Venice Beach Used to Be"
-www.AlkiBeachPark.com - While not cheap to purchase in, this is still an affordable rental area (compared with many of the other metro areas) and it reminds many of the way Venice Beach, CA used to be before all the recent development and astronomical price increases.
The diversity of people; along with the beachfront walking/biking trail, its history, its local hiking trails, and its easy access/proximity to seattle downtown make this a gayborhood worth checking"
USA - Hartford, CT
Parkville, West End & Glastonbury
Glastonbury
Settled in 1633, and now on the eye of NYC & Boston LGBTQ couples and families for affordable second or country homes and/or retirement in a town with close proximity to city centers, whole foods, and other services. The LGBTQ community started increasing here a few years ago, but it is now gaining momentum/volume as this community is still affordable,has great schools, increasing number of restaurant offerings, and still maintains a small connecticut village feel. From Wikipedia: "The town begins on the banks of the Connecticut River and extends up into foothills, many of which provide a view of Hartford's skyline. Some major developments in the town are built entirely on relatively steep hills, such as "Minnechaug Mountain", the major residential area developed from the 1970s until late '90s."
USA - Orlando, Fl
Universal - Millenia
Florida - Orlando's Downtown and several other neighborhoods are long established Gayborhoods, but the area off the Conroy exit & Interstate- 4 between Universal Studios and Millenia Mall (Orlando's High End Mall) aside from being very centrally located, it still offers affordable condos and rentals that have been atracting LGBTQ community members of all ages from US, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Venezuela, and the young cuban americans fleeing crowded and expensive south beach.
US - Baltimore Inner Harbor, Maryland
Otterbein
Small, exclusive, established, and in the best central location to enjoy the best of Baltimore's Inner Harbor and with direct train connections to Washington DC - Union Station and BWI Airport. The num er of rainbow flags around the townhouses, and condos in the neighborhood where Baltimore's renaissance started a few years back have been multiplying at a very fast rate, but it still provides affordable home options. options.
Top Places for LGBTQ Folks to Live—and It's Not Just New York and San Francisco
https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/top-places-for-lgbtq-folks-to-live/
"To come up with our ranking,* realtor.com looked at cities with at least 50,000 households, of which at least 0.5% were headed by same-sex partners, according to U.S. Census info.
We looked at each city's score on the Human Rights Campaign Municipal Equality Index, which measures how inclusive its laws and services are for the gay community. We factored in numbers of gay bars and Meetup groups per 10,000 households, and made sure that each place on our list has an annual pride parade or festival.
So why didn't world-famous gay meccas such as New York City, Los Angeles, or Miami make our list? Although they have high numbers of same-sex couples, they represented a smaller percentage of those huge cities' overall populations.
So what are the most fabulously gay-friendly places to live?
1. San Francisco, CA
2. Atlanta, GA
3. St. Petersburg, FL
4. Denver, CO
5. Seattle, WA
6. Portland, OR
7. Minneapolis, MN
8. St. Louis, MO
9. Providence, RI
10. Austin, TXus
The Future
Gayborhoods aren't dead. In fact, there are more of them than you think.
Research: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cico.12381
Article: https://mashable.com/article/gayborhoods-changing-amin-ghaziani/
"There goes the gayborhood," The New York Times proclaimed in one 2017 headline.
But Amin Ghaziani, assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, isn't exactly grieving.
In his recently published piece, "Cultural Archipelagos: New Directions in the Study of Sexuality and Space," Ghaziani analyzes new research to make a bold hypothesis: The gayborhood hasn't died, and it isn't being diluted out of existence. Instead,
"Gayborhoods are multiplying and diversifying."
Gayborhoods, Ghaziani argues, aren't singular sites but have instead become cultural archipelagos: a series of queer islands, connected by sexuality and gender. And cities will often have more than one of them.
Is there a future for gay villages?
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/is-there-a-future-for-gay-villages.aspx
"Cities have always been havens for difference where, because of the sheer number of people living there, you can make a place with others with whom you share something in common. Gay villages formed in order to provide people with a place of mutual support, protection and socialisation, but now face a number of threats to their continued existence. LGBT History Month gives us an opportunity to reflect on how gay villages have changed over time and to look at some of the challenges that face them today.
Prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK in 1967, isolated bars and private clubs developed reputations for tolerating non-heterosexual communities. These clandestine gay venues did not always have an exclusively homosexual clientele, but usually operated on a small scale and were generally squeezed into somewhat unfashionable or down-at-heel parts of town.
Following decriminalisation, by the late 1970s a more distinctive scene had begun to emerge with dedicated bars, clubs and support services clustering in run-down parts of larger cities that mainstream property developers were paying little attention to. These areas gained particular importance as sources of information exchange, health services and support as AIDS decimated gay communities during the 1980s.
These semi-formal clusters of LGBT-friendly bars and services in the 1980s developed into more fully-fledged and formalised villages through the 1990s, particularly as cities saw the potential for developing their night time economies. The venues and bars of Manchester’s Canal Street, for example, piggybacked on the Madchester club scene of the time, creating a vibrant night time economy in a previously run-down part of the city. Manchester City Council then sought to capitalise on this activity, heavily promoting Canal Street as part of its international marketing to tourists.
Much of the social and health support services that were provided by gay villages can today be accessed online, reducing the need for a dedicated space to exchange this information. Likewise, the rise of smartphone apps has reduced the need to go to a specific venue in order to meet other LGBT people. Greater tolerance for homosexuality in society has at large reduced – although not removed – the need for gay villages to serve as safe spaces in which to be openly gay.
As they developed, gay villages relied upon a combination of low rents and an economy based around drinking cultures to sustain their vibrancy. As Britain’s city centres have been regenerated since the late 1990s, property values in these areas have increased, bringing the challenge of gentrification, whereby more marginal users of urban spaces are pushed out in favour of those who can generate higher revenues. If owners feel that they can make more money by converting a site into apartments, they have little incentive to keep renting out space to a bar. At the same time, people’s drinking habits are changing, with a 17% fall in the number of pubs between 2006 and 2013.
These changes in wider society squeeze the financial model underpinning gay villages in their current form. But gay villages still have a crucial role to play. Homophobia has not gone away and creating safe spaces is still important.
There are also particular challenges in some non-white communities, which can be less tolerant of homosexuality. The fact that gay villages are so strongly connected to drinking and partying cultures can be exclusionary both to particular ethnic communities and also to older people. Likewise, the virtual worlds of dating apps have tended to be targeted at gay men, with lesbians much less well served by these platforms.
The challenge is to find new forms for gay villages in a changing society to better serve the needs of the LGBT community today.
The challenge is to find new forms for gay villages in a changing society to better serve the needs of the LGBT community today.
Examining the Past, Present, and Future of Chicago's First Gay Neighborhood
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-history-of-chicagos-boystown-examining-the-past-present-and-future-of-the-citys-iconic-gay-neighborhood
Though Boystown has become a significant visual symbol of LGBT+ identity in Chicago, it’s actually increasingly less inhabited solely by LGBT+ residents. The reasons behind this decline in residency are mixed. On a positive note, vastly improved legal protections for and cultural acceptance of the LGBT+ community means that many LGBT+ individuals are comfortable residing in areas that aren’t specifically known as LGBT+ communities. “…The Census now finds same-sex romantic couples living together in 93 percent of America's counties,” Matthew Yglesias of Vox wrote when outlining this trend. “The gay population is becoming less concentrated as its legal, political, and social reality is increasingly accepted.”
In the real estate realm, inclusive state and city housing policies, coupled with the equality-focused practices of real estate agents, have helped contribute to this trend, despite the fact that there is actually no federal law in place protecting LGBT+ individuals from housing discrimination (the Fair Housing Act doesn’t identify LGBT+ individuals as a protected class)....
Overall, the history of Chicago’s Boystown is both rich and nuanced and it, like many gay neighborhoods across the country, will always be a substantial part of the legacy of its city. What the future holds for Boystown will depend on many political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors that will shape the evolution and identity of the neighborhood, in ways both expected and unforeseen."
"Greetings From the Gayborhood — and Beyond"
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/greetings-from-the-gayborhood-and-beyond
We must unreservedly recognize the gayborhood. They allow queer people to find each other for friendship, fellowship, sex and love. Gayborhoods incubate unique cultures, political perspectives, organizations, rituals, and styles of socialization. At the end of a long day, they promise a sense of safety from discrimination and an opportunity to center and celebrate queerness. The more we look, the more we see that gayborhoods have a hand in every aspect of modern life: from strategies, like rainbow crosswalks, that city officials use to commemorate their local district to the shaping of real estate values; from the institutional development of queer communities to their civic engagement; and from pride parades to protests and electoral influence....
Embracing the notion of archipelagos does not require us to suppress or subordinate the importance of the gayborhood but rather to see it as one part of a dynamic chain of LGBTQ islands of cultural significance, all of which contribute to the vitality of our cities. "
Why do some LGBTI people give up living in gay hotspots and cities to move to small towns?
https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gayborhood-rural-life/#gs.30bp9g
"Everybody had deemed me a veteran, true-blue New Yorker (I’m originally from the suburbs of Boston) and predicted that I would last a few months in a rural area.
We just marked 17 years in Ulster County (NY). Even though we were living in the friendly, cozy, funky West Village, where it’s a small town within the metropolis, fancy upscale stores and tall buildings were beginning to impinge upon that small-town vibe.
That insult, coupled with soaring prices and a sharp drop in quality of life, fueled our decision to leave. Happily, my husband Brook agreed with me to move"
Gayborhoods Value
Gayborhood Home Premiums Top 200% in Some Markets
https://www.zillow.com/research/gayborhood-home-premiums-24233/
"Gayborhoods — cultural enclaves that have long provided safety, community and belonging for LGBTQ+ people — are so in-demand that, in dozens of markets across the country, you’d pay a hefty premium to live there.
We’re talking big money; in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars...
Overwhelmingly, homes in gayborhoods come at a premium.[1] Ironically, that surcharge puts the neighborhoods out of reach for many LGBTQ+ people, especially women and people who are transgender and gender nonconforming. Those groups, on average, have lower incomes than cisgender gay men.
The reasons for the surcharge are many, and stem largely from the role the LGBTQ+ community has played in the gentrification of urban centers, which also has had an impact on people who never left."
9 Gayborhoods With Median Home Values Under $300,000
https://www.zillow.com/research/affordably-priced-gayborhoods-24335/
San Antonio, TX
South Arena District/Southeast Denver Heights
Milwaukee, WI
Honey Creek Manor
Las Vegas, NV
East Paradise
Cleveland, OH
Riverside
Virginia Beach Metro
Northfolk, VA
Lafayette-Winona
Tampa-St Petersburg Metro, FL
Southeast Gulfport
St Louis, MO
Shaw-South Grand
Kansas City, MO
Longfellow
Chicago, IL
Edgewater to Lakeview
LGBT REAL ESTATE REPORT 2019-20
A view of LGBT Homeownership Trends and Economic Impact
https://naglrep.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019-naglrep-lgbt-real-estate-report.pdf
"Life events, especially marriage, are traditional drivers of homeownership.
The LGBT community has clearly benefited since same-sex marriage was legalized in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision on June 26, 2015. The ruling has impacted home buying habits.
Freddie Mac’s consumer study showed that 73% of all married LGBT couples own their own home, compared to 41% of non-married LGBT couples and only 35% of LGBT singles.
NAGLREP members – 55% of those surveyed - believe more married LGBT couple are buying homes since the Supreme Court victory. The number has grown from 46% just two years ago.A
Additionally, 67% of NAGLREP members believe the number of LGBTs with children has increased since the ruling. This momentum should be a good sign for the real estate market because Freddie Mac reports that 64% of LGBT parents currently own a home.
The Castro (SF), Boystown (Chicago), U Street Corridor (DC), other prominent “gayborhoods,” and large and medium sized urban centers, attract 44% of LGBT renters.
LGBT homeowners are less urban-centric in where they live.
LGBTs are a mobile group.Only 32% of those surveyed live in the same general location as where they grew up. While most cited jobs for their move (48%), it is interesting to note that 38% moved for a change in environment and 31% cited they wanted to live in a more LGBT friendly locale.
While 72% of LGBT renters say they want to own a home in the future and 52% expect do so within the next five years, they have not yet recognized the emotional and financial benefits of homeownership.
Freddie Mac found that 70% of LGBT renters cite not having the funds for a down payment as the top reason they have not yet bought a home.
Freddie Mac reported that 46% of LGBT renters fear discrimination in their future home buying process while only 13% report that it actually did occur.
The Future May Be Bright
The Equality Act was reintroduced in Congress on March 13. This bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, public accommodations, public education, federal funding, credit, the jury system AND housing. When the Equality Act ultimately passes it will pave the way for a future where LGBTs are protected from discrimination. "
Florida's most famous gayborhood invests in homes for gay seniors
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-elderly/floridas-most-famous-gayborhood-invests-in-homes-for-gay-seniors-idUSKCN1MF02G
Builders are preparing to break ground on Florida’s first affordable housing project for elderly LGBT+ residents, one of several specialist homes emerging nationwide, from Los Angeles to Chicago, with the backing of gay community centers.
The notion that the LGBT+ population in the United States is wealthy and can afford to retire to beachfront condos or facilities with farm-to-table cuisine is a myth, experts said.
The population of the United States is ageing. By 2035, the country will have more seniors aged 65 and over - 78 million - than minors under the age of 18, according to the Census Bureau.
It predicts the number of LGBT+ adults over the age of 50 will more than double to 7 million by 2030 from 3 million today.
How LASC and Its Owners Helped Create West Hollywood’s ‘Gayborhood’
https://www.wehoville.com/2019/07/15/how-lasc-and-its-owners-helped-create-west-hollywoods-gayborhood/
"Long before there was a Shake Shack or PUMP, before the Abbey or the very first White Party, before Sprouts, Whole Foods, Gelson’s or Pavilions, before the Red, Green and Blue buildings, there was the Los Angeles Sporting Club
There were also a few people who owned a majority of the real estate in the gayborhood.
When we talk about cause and effect in the decline of the gayborhoods think of this — in one corner we had the activist Jeanne Dobrin fighting against the city issuing too many liquor licenses, and in the other corner, there was the City Council approving almost every change-of-use request that came before it.
Jeanne slugged it out year after year over many changes of use that resulted in an extraordinary number of liquor licenses being issued. Jeanne fought to keep liquor licenses limited and protect the neighborhood-serving businesses. The Council voted time and time again to allow almost any business to pay for parking credits and convert to a bar or restaurant.
Landlords reaped the benefits. Today West Hollywood has more liquor licenses per square mile than any other city in California. The gayborhood became the drinking and dining district."
Montreal "Gikers: Gay Hikers Group"