Source: Guardian, Bay Windows

A fluffy yellow bedspread is severely tucked around the hospital-style bed, there's a wheelchair-accessible shower and a token pot plant. At first glance, the Asta Nielsen Haus in Berlin looks like the average old people's home. But this is a pioneering facility - the first in Europe to cater exclusively for gays and lesbians.

"We just want people to be able to speak freely of their pasts. They shouldn't have to worry about reactions or prejudices," says Kerstin Wecker, who runs the centre. "It's simple really: no one should be shocked to go into a man's room and see a picture of another man. No one should have to explain themselves to others at this stage of life."

It's a scene that both developers and activists had hoped to partly mirror soon in Boston. They had bought the land and designed the building for a slightly different kind of facility, but one that would also have catered to the gay and gray.

Stonewall Audubon Circle had been planned as an LGBT-oriented retirement community in the Fenway neighborhood. It would have been a retirement community rather than a full-service elder care facility like the one in Berlin. 53 homes would have been (and, someday, might again be) available for purchase -- a mix of one- and two-bedroom residences ranging in price from approximately $400,000 to $800,000.

But the planned development became a casualty of disintegrating real estate and credit markets. On February 4, David Aronstein, president of Stonewall Communities, which is co-sponsoring the development with Abbott Real Estate Development, announced that the Spring 2008 groundbreaking has been put on hold until the real estate market improves. Aronstein told Bay Windows it is unclear when Stonewall Communities will reschedule the groundbreaking.

"We’re not making any assumptions. It’s really going to depend both on the real estate market and the lending market. ... People are very uncertain about the future so they don’t know whether they’d be able to sell their own house or buy a house. The uncertainty of the market is what does it. Uncertainty makes everybody wait," said Aronstein.

In Berlin, on the other hand, Asta Nielsen Haus has already welcomed its first residents.

Tucked away in a quiet corner of the city's northern Pankow district, the home, which takes its name from a Danish film starlet, has space for 28 residents. Half of the care assistants working there are also homosexual - something a survey of potential residents showed was a priority. Aside from an automatic acceptance of their past, the home is run like any other, Wecker says. "We don't want to be exotic, just a slice of everyday life."

The idea of a gay-only project for elderly people was first mooted at a "gay and grey" congress in Cologne in 1995. It reflects fears among Germany's first openly gay generation about what will happen when they are too frail to care for themselves.

In Boston, Stonewall Communities began offering prospective buyers the opportunity to put deposits down on units last August. Aronstein declined to say how many of the units have been reserved, but said prospective residents who have put down deposits have always had the right to withdraw their offer and get a refund.

When the market improves Aronstein said the plan for constructing Stonewall Audubon Circle will resume.

"We own the property, and it has all the city approvals necessary and zoning approvals, so when the market turns around we’ll be ready to go," said Aronstein.

Despite the market conditions, different real estate developers are forging ahead (for now) with plans for gay-focused retirement communities in Arizona, New Mexico, San Francisco, and Vancouver.

The developers of Asta Nielsen Haus are also drawing up plans for an assisted-care retirement center for gay people in another Berlin district.

Full article: Jess Smee: Glad to be gay and grey in Berlin's new old people's home | World news | The Guardian
Stonewall community plans on hold | Bay Windows