Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, (fifth from left), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (third from left), Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (sixth from right), Boston City Councilors and other dignitaries celebrate groundbreaking at The Pryde, New England's first LGBTQ-focused senior housing development, in June 2022. Photo courtesy of LGBTQ+ Senior Housing Inc.

Republicans in Congress have axed funding for New England’s first LGBTQ senior housing development, now under construction in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, but the nonprofit behind the project is vowing to press on.

“The project is not in danger. We’re full steam ahead and we’ll make this work,” said Gretchen Van Ness, executive director of LGBTQ+ Senior Housing Inc.

The $850,000 earmark, sought by Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, would have gone to help create programming for the new development, to be called The Pryde.The earmark was one of three LGBTQ social services-focused ones, totaling $3.82 million, in a $90.23 billion package of funding for transportation, housing and urban development projects and programs that Republicans on the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee cut out on a party-line vote Tuesday. The GOP legislators objected to federal money going to support LGBTQ programming, according to Roll Call. Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures across the country have significantly ramped up attacks on the LGBTQ community in the last year, starting with transgender individuals and recently broadening the pushback to other areas of LGBT rights.

“It is unconscionable that Republican committee members would hold senior citizen-specific housing hostage and continue their dangerous national trend of targeting the LGBTQ+ community. This [earmark] process is intended for our communities to advocate for projects that have the highest impact, and this move by Republicans is blatant homophobia designed to attack some of our most vulnerable seniors,” Pressley said in a statement released by her office Wednesday.

The Pryde, which LGBTQ+ Senior Housing is developing in partnership with Penrose, will convert a 100-year-old former public middle school that’s been closed since 2015 into a 74-unit, all-affordable senior housing facility that also includes a community center for the Hyde Park neighborhood and a community center for the Greater Boston LGBTQ community. DiMella Shaffer is the architect.

Issues builder NEI General Contracting discovered during construction – including ledge in front of the building that’s proved significantly difficult to remove to make way for accessible ramps, Van Ness said – had already pushed the project over budget. While NEI and Penrose pursue value-engineering design changes, Van Ness said, LGBTQ+ Senior Housing has been chasing grants, corporate gifts, individual donations and other funding sources to help retain as many amenities as possible. The earmark Pressley had submitted as part of the federal budget was intended to help develop virtual and hybrid programming to connect LGBTQ seniors living across the region even if they’re unable to reach The Pryde in person. Greater Boston has no LGBTQ-focused community center.

“I recently got a call from a senior who lives in a 600-unit senior development in Quincy who said ‘I think I’m the only lesbian in this facility and I’m so, so alone,'” Van Ness said. “Isolation is a killer for seniors…and we know if you’re forced to live in the closet, it takes 12 years off your life.”

Van Ness said many LGBTQ seniors living in senior housing say they can face harassment and discrimination for their sexual orientation or gender identity from other residents and staff, even in Massachusetts. In addition, she said, LGBTQ seniors are more likely to be housing- and food-insecure than their straight and cisgender peers, adding to the project’s importance.

“If you were a kid who came out in 1970 you might have been kicked out your home. During the AIDS crisis if your partner died and they owned the house, you might lose your housing because there were no marriage protections,” she said. “This is the generation that’s experienced not just the trauma of loss, but also the financial loss because there were no protections.”