South Florida is joining a national trend of affordable housing for the LGBT community with a new project: the Residences at Equality Park.
Carrfour Supportive Housing and the Pride Center are teaming up for the senior housing project, slated to break ground next year and be delivered in late 2018. Carrfour has secured 9 percent tax credits for the first phase consisting of 48 apartments, president and CEO Stephanie Berman told The Real Deal. She said it’s the first LGBT project for Carrfour, which specializes in special needs affordable housing.
The Pride Center serves thousands of members of the LGBT community on an annual basis, Berman said. It will provide on-site supportive services, including healthcare navigation and coordination, support groups, counseling and other activities. Phase one of the residences will break down into 34 units for low-income seniors with disabling conditions and the remaining units for low-income seniors earning less than 60 percent of the area’s median income, which is about $35,000 a year. Phase two will include about 74 units as planned.
The Pride Center owns the 5-acre Equality Park campus at 2040 North Dixie Highway in Wilton Manors. Eventually, the nonprofit hopes to redevelop the entire campus, Berman said. Those plans call for a new multi-use center, a new outdoor pavilion, boathouse cafe and picnic area. The property currently includes 30,000 square feet of office space.
Cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago and Philadelphia are seeing new LGBT affordable housing projects geared toward seniors. Nearly half of LGBT seniors in the United States live with a disabling condition, according to the Institute for Multigenerational Health.
“Broward County has a rapidly-expanding population of aging LGBT adults and unfortunately, very limited affordable housing options,” Robert Boo, CEO of the Pride Center, said in a press release.