For These LGBTQ Seniors, Closets Are Just for Clothes

When asked why he applied to live in Town Hall Apartments, Chicago’s first LGBTQ-friendly senior housing complex, resident Tom Genley is ready with a pithy response: “Because this place is going to have closets for clothes.” He is all too familiar with the other, metaphorical kind of closet. “It took long enough for me to get out,” he says. “I didn’t want to go back in.”

Genley and his partner occupy one of Town Hall’s 79 units, a mix of affordable one-bedroom and studio apartments at 3600 N. Halsted in Chicago’s gay district, nicknamed Boystown. Town Hall is a joint project of Heartland Alliance, the anti-poverty group that developed and manages the property, and Center on Halsted, Chicago’s LGBTQ resources and cultural center, which provides services including case management and programming.