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FWD #264 •  794 words

Pride Month is a good time to ask a practical question: what does housing look like for LGBTQ+ Virginians across their lifetime?

The answer, backed by a growing, yet inconsistent body of research, is that housing is harder at nearly every life stage. It’s not because of some unchanged, inevitable condition, but because of identifiable, addressable housing policy barriers. While most of the research cited here predates 2024, it still remains among the best available data on queer populations and housing. Federal collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data in housing and homelessness surveys have significantly curtailed since early 2025, though, making updated estimates unlikely anytime soon. These information gaps are themselves part of the story.

It starts young

About 28% of LGBTQ+ youth report experiencing homelessness or housing instability at some point in their lives.* This is both a social services, as well as a housing pipeline problem in its own right. More than half of youth who ran away from home said that they did so because of mistreatment or the fear of mistreatment surrounding their identity. Family rejection is the primary driver of queer youth housing instability. The consequences of this compound quickly: queer, housing unstable youth were three times more likely to attempt suicide compared to their stably housed LGBTQ+ peers.

Virginia isn’t immune. In the same study, Southern states (where Virginia is grouped) showed elevated rates of LGBTQ+ youth homelessness relative to the Northeast. Our homeless response system, like most in the country, wasn’t designed to uniquely support youth unhoused populations.

It’s easy to underestimate the scale of need for younger queer communities: nationally, 15% of adults under 25 identify as LGBTQ+, or nearly one in six. The South is also home to the largest share of transgender Americans of any region: an estimated 279,000 people, according to a 2025 Williams Institute analysis of federal health survey data.** This means the population most likely to identify this way is the same population most at risk of family rejection and housing instability.

The gap widens in adulthood

Even when queer adults are housed, they’re far less likely to own their own home. The homeownership rate among LGBTQ+ people is 51% compared to 71% ownership amongst straight, cisgender people. This gap can be explained by systemic barriers in the transfer of generational wealth: same-sex couples were excluded from the financial and legal benefits of marriage until relatively recently. This means the starting line for many LGBTQ+ households is not only different compared to straight, cis households, but also reflects ongoing discrimination queer people have faced. The Urban Institute notes that little empirical research exists on the full scope of  mortgage market disparities for this population, in part because most housing datasets still don’t collect sexual orientation or gender identity data.

In 2020 Virginia passed the Virginia Values Act, which amended Virginia’s Fair Housing Law to make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity when renting or selling a property. Sexual orientation and gender identity are now protected classes, the first of its kind in the South at the time.

That’s a data problem we can fix. Virginia’s local housing needs assessments and market studies rarely include LGBTQ+ populations as a distinct subgroup, but they can start collecting this information to help fill in the gaps.

Making golden years for everyone

An estimated 3.6 million LGBTQ+ people over 50 currently live across the U.S., a number projected to reach 7 million by 2030. Demographic aging is reshaping housing markets across the Commonwealth and the country, and queer seniors are twice as likely to live alone and four times less likely to have children than their heterosexual peers. This could make these aging households uniquely dependent on formalized housing and care systems. Nationally, there are a small number of dedicated queer and gay affirming retirement communities, but there are none in Virginia.

Housing vulnerability for queer communities isn’t a single issue with a single fix. It’s a pattern that repeats across a lifespan, and it’s rooted in structural barriers like, housing market discrimination, wealth-building exclusion, and care systems that weren’t designed for this gender-expansive community. After two decades of rising public acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, attitudes have plateaued and begun to slip — which makes it more important for Virginia’s housing community to anchor its work in data and policy rather than towards cultural tailwinds.

Safe, stable housing doesn’t care about politics. Neither should our response.

Happy Pride Month from HousingForward Virginia 🌈

Footnotes

*That 28% figure comes from the Trevor Project’s 2021 survey of LGBTQ+ youth — and it remains the best available data. No federal survey currently tracks housing instability among LGBTQ+ youth specifically, and recent federal rollbacks of sexual orientation and gender identity data collection make updated estimates less likely.

**That estimate comes from the Williams Institute’s August 2025 report on transgender population size, which draws on two federal public health surveys — the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), an annual CDC phone survey of adults in all 50 states, and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), a CDC survey of high school students conducted every two years. Both surveys include optional questions on gender identity, and the Williams Institute uses responses pooled across multiple years, combined with statistical modeling, to produce stable estimates at the national, regional, and state level.