By Marc Stiles  –  Senior Reporter, Puget Sound Business Journal Jun 9, 2022 

Updated Jun 10, 2022, 7:37 am PDT

This Pride Month, the Seattle LGBTQ community can celebrate that it will soon have a newly built senior center to call its own.

The GenPride center will be at the base of Pride Place, a $52.2 million project that includes 118 income restricted apartments. Under construction at 1519 Broadway in the heart of Capitol Hill, it’s the state’s first LGBTQIA+ senior housing community.

There are LGBTQ-focused housing projects elsewhere in the country. What’s unique about Pride Place is that community organization GenPride will own the ground-floor senior center.

“That’s pretty unique to be able to have a continuum of services right there within the housing,” said Karen Fredriksen Goldsen, founder of GenPride.

The development sprang forth from Aging with Pride: National Health, Aging, Sexuality/Gender Study, the first study to follow the lives of LGBTQ people, which examined whether they age differently than straight people. The study followed 2,450 people age 50 to 102.

Fredriksen Goldsen, a professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, was the lead investigator of the study. It found LGBTQ people are more likely to experience poverty, are at higher risk for illness and often face both discrimination and difficulty finding culturally competent care.

“Seattle and Washington state had very limited services for LGBTQ seniors,” said Fredriksen Goldsen, an internationally known expert in the area of LGBTQ aging. “Our area actually had some of the least developed ways for LGBTQ older adults to connect and [to find] services.”

Steven Knipp, GenPride executive director, and Karen Fredriksen Goldsen, founder of GenPride, are pictured at the under-construction Pride Place development on Capitol Hill.
image credit: ANTHONY BOLANTE | PSBJ