Britain to get first ever LGBT retirement home

The first ever LGBT retirement home could soon open in the UK.

Tonic Housing has begun plans to build the home for up to 150 people in either London or Brighton.

It aims to build the first LGBT retirement home in the UK, as they already exist in Spain, the US and Germany.

One of the directors of Tonic, James Greenshields, told BuzzFeed News that the plans were “unashamedly ambitious” with an “iconic architectural design”.

He went on to say he was inspired when he began considering his own future.

“If you don’t have your own children and if you have fractured family relationships, which is a possibility, then you would not have the support networks that many older people count on,” he said.

“So I thought, ‘What would happen to me?’ And then, ‘Well, what is there in the UK?’ I was really taken aback that, although there are organisations for older LGBT people, in terms of care homes, there is nothing at all.

“It was a shock. The need and the demand is out there.”

He said the plans were inspired by the retirement home in Madrid, Spain, which has a glass frontage, and that they “felt like they wanted the outside world to come in, and that’s important.”

Continuing, he said he wanted to avoid the perception that retirements homes are “dismal”.

• Drag
• Jan 03

Start your engines! All 16 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race US ranked from worst to best