While there’s no designated gayborhood in Virginia Beach, the ViBe Creative District is an artsy cultural hub. At the end of the month, a Pride Kiki is planned at Ocean Breeze Waterpark. Festivities started Saturday at MJ’s Tavern, a gay watering hole in nearby Norfolk. The annual Hampton Roads PrideFest, which includes a boat parade, has been moved to September this year, but there are still plenty of things to do during Pride Month. It has no shortage of historic sites, three military bases, and tons of restaurants and bars. Virginia Beach, a coastal city where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, is one of Virginia’s prime resort towns, with much of its economy based on the tourism industry. This three-bedroom, 2.5-bath home there is listed for $239,900. Penn Hills is more family-friendly with a good school system and plenty of historic homes. A two-story condo there is currently on the market for $329,900. Most of the LGBTQ nightlife is located in the Shadyside neighborhood, a historic and walkable area that also has galleries and restaurants. There’s also an active theater scene, with the annual Pride Theater Festival held in summer and the Pittsburgh International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in the fall. Queer icons like Andy Warhol, Gertrude Stein, and Willa Cather have all called Pittsburgh home at one point, and the arts scene is still thriving today, with the Warhol Museum and the contemporary art museum the Mattress Factory. They “are finding places like Pittsburgh where they can actually have quite a lavish lifestyle as far as homes go compared to other markets like San Francisco,” Larson says. Recently, Larson has worked with transplants from Los Angeles and other people who can work from anywhere. “Since then, our pride festivals have grown year over year into something that has really kind of been a destination.” “‘Queer as Folk’ kind of put Pittsburgh on the gay map,” says Brian Larson, a sales specialist with Coldwell Banker Real Estate in Pittsburgh.
The gay community in Pittsburgh offers an intertwined hometown feel, which is why it was chosen as the setting for “Queer as Folk,” the groundbreaking Showtime series of the early aughts. Pittsburgh has built a reputation as a gay-friendly community since “Queer as Folk” premiered in 2000. Then we looked at cities in these states that received a score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Municipal Equality Index, where the LGBTQ advocacy group assesses equality in cities’ policies, laws, and services. To come up with this list, the data team found states that had at least 2.5 married or co-habitating same-sex couples per 1,000 residents using U.S. Because of this, some LGBTQ people are looking for other places to call home, says Amin Ghaziani, a professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. And while lesbians tend to earn more than heterosexual women, most still earn less than either gay or heterosexual men.Īnother challenge: gentrification that’s been going on for years in larger cities pricing people out. Gay men are more likely to get paid less than heterosexual men, according to research from UCLA’s Williams Institute. One reason is a sexual orientation wage gap. That number is even lower for LGBTQ people of color, who are more likely to experience housing discrimination.
Only about half are homeowners compared with about 65% of the general population, according to the report. Members of the LGBTQ community are still less likely to own a home. “You don’t to walk out your door and go into a world that’s abrasive and wants to judge you.” “LGBTQ folks want an equitable experience,” says Ryan Weyandt, CEO of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance.
Safety and an accepting community are two of the most important considerations of gay home buyers, according to a report last month by Freddie Mac and the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, an organization of real estate professionals. All of them have good housing stock, plenty of things to do, and prices that are still (relatively) within reach. What we found were mostly smaller cities with thriving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer cultures, and college towns that have strong anti-discriminatory laws. That’s why the ® data team sought out the nation’s most affordable gay meccas.
And with home prices rising just about everywhere, it’s more important than ever to find places that are not only gay-friendly but also budget-friendly. While big cities like San Francisco and New York have been long-renowned for their thriving gay scenes, they’re also notoriously expensive places to buy a home.