Retiring in San Francisco, California as an LGBTQIA+ Older Adult

TurnOut is a volunteer organization founded in 2015 that recruits and supports volunteers for queer and trans grassroots organizations. It describes its work as the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. It operates across several California regions including the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County, and is based in Oakland. Programs include locally organized Take Action volunteering, trainings, organizational support and mutual aid coordination. For an older LGBTQIA+ adult, TurnOut is most useful in two directions. It is a route into volunteering, which is one of the more reliable protections against isolation in later life, and it is the reason many smaller elder-serving queer organizations have enough hands to run their programs at all. Volunteering is free and the organization accepts donations. It has no walk-in office and no published phone number, so contact runs through the website.

LAASN, the LGBTQ+ Aging and Abilities Support Network, is a program of Shanti Project in San Francisco. Shanti has worked on isolation and peer support since the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and LAASN applies that model to LGBTQIA+ older adults and people with disabilities. Peer support is the core of it. Isolation is not a soft problem in later life: it is associated with worse health outcomes, and LGBTQIA+ elders are markedly more likely than their peers to be aging without a spouse or adult children. Eligibility, hours and costs are not published on the organization's public pages. Call the main Shanti number and ask for LAASN.

The Ivy at Golden Gate is an assisted living and memory care community in San Francisco, housed in a designated historical landmark building on 19th Avenue in the Sunset district. It offers assisted living alongside Evergreen at Ivy, the operator's specialist memory care program for residents living with dementia or Alzheimer's. Homes are studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. The community is licensed by California as a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, license number 385601148, which you can look up through the California Department of Social Services. Checking that record yourself is worth ten minutes for any assisted living community you are seriously considering. Pricing is not published. Ask what the base monthly fee covers and how care levels are assessed and charged on top of it.