Tonic Housing opened the first LGBTQ+ retirement community in the UK in 2021. Tony Watts OBE asks Bob Green, their Head of Operations, how housing can bring the generations together.

Q: So, what is Tonic’s mission?

A: To be an affirming community where LGBTQ+ older people can feel safe, confident, and celebrate their later life. 

Q – And what led you personally to get involved? 

A – I’ve been working on housing for 30 years or so… first as a volunteer, then working in different homelessness hostels, drug and alcohol centres, and mental health units. In 2005, I became the CEO of Stonewall Housing – a charity which provides housing, advice and support for LGBTQ+ people throughout England. 


LGBTQ+ people not only face more harassment and abuse. They are also more likely to become homeless. One programme we started was an older person’s service – bringing older people together with housing providers as there wasn’t any specific accommodation for our communities.

Q: From your experience, what makes the ageing experience unique for LGBTQ+ people? 

A – For a lot of us when we were younger, being lesbian/gay was against the law. Being transgender, for a long time, was considered a mental health issue as well.

We grew up, I think, hating ourselves because society instructed that. Even in 2026, you still have that harassment and hate crime continuing. There is still discrimination ­–­ some letting agents, for example, will not let properties to same-sex couples… even following the Equality Act in 2010.

The experiences that some in our communities have had in sheltered accommodation or care homes have been dreadful. So that’s why Tonic was set up: we need accommodation where we can celebrate who we are. We’ve lost family, we’ve lost friends and we need that connection. The communities are the new family… they support each other and look out for each other.

Q – Do older LGBTQ+ people have different needs or preferences when it comes to companionship and home support? 


A – Loneliness is a killer, I mean it’s proven now and it’s especially difficult for older LGBTQ+ people.

We did some research prior to Tonic opening and also in Manchester when we were setting up the community group there, and I think 1% of people were happy to live in mainstream housing and accommodation. The majority wanted LGBTQ+ specific accommodation or at least accommodation that had achieved an accreditation that they were LGBTQ+ affirmed.

Our communities also need intergenerational connections, as well as the connections with people of similar ages. We have young people who are still experiencing harassment and discrimination… and we can see from the political climate at the moment that we’re losing the battles a lot. For trans people, especially.

We’re very fortunate here and that we have links with the LGBTQ+ Community centre in Southwark. We’ve had writing and drama classes, which brings together younger people and older people, and then they connect.

We started another project in January with an art collective, and they will be working with our residents and younger people from different Black and Asian communities to start thinking about what the best retirement community would look like in the future and they will design them together.

We get a lot of younger people saying they want to talk to the older generation. Our older generation quite often feel excluded or invisible. It’s really exciting because younger people have taken the initiative and approached us ­– and that’s why our volunteer teams ballooned over the last year to 30 people

We hope that it’ll continue to grow and continue to offer, not just the activities that we deliver, but also one-to-one befriending support, which a lot of people crave as well.

Q: How much demand is there for what you offer?

A: Within a couple of weeks, we had to close the waiting list.

But it’s no good just having older people’s housing, we need younger people’s housing too. We need a better planned strategy that will give a journey for our communities.

We also need to be thinking of LGBTQ+ people living in rural areas, living alone, where they may not have connections, the nearest community group might be hundreds of miles away, so they need to have connections as well. They need to have people supporting them. And that’s why we need a national strategy, where there are no gaps.

Q – What would you say are the major benefits between intergenerational living within your community, maybe compared to other communities? 

A – There are intergenerational living schemes in other countries – in Amsterdam and Berlin for example – where younger people provide support and the older people provide the lived experience. These schemes have been going for a while and we can see there’s a benefit for both the younger people and the older people living there.

There are other groups across the UK thinking about developing older people’s accommodation for LTBTQ+ people, but Leeds are taking a different tack as they want to do intergenerational living. So Tonic is working with them to think about how we, as a registered provider, can support that dream.

Community groups have got the ideas and the solutions… but we need the specialists, we need the experts, and we need the funding to connect that solution with the land, the property and the development.

Q: And intergenerational house sharing?

Intergenerational house sharing is definitely a gap. Older people may have the property, they may have the equity, but they might struggle with the upkeep or they might struggle with bills.

So having a younger person moving in, who can be a companion, but also help financially, it just makes total sense to us.

You can find out more about Tonic Housing at https://www.tonichousing.org.uk