No Longer Urban Denizens, Gays Disperse To Face Dangers of Diaspora
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Gay urban enclaves and neighborhoods like the Castro in San Francisco, West Hollywood in L.A., New York’s Greenwich Village, and Chicago’s Boystown face mass emigration of gay denizens. The reasons are myriad and range from housing costs, and having families, to increasing acceptance in suburbia.
Gay activist Cleve Jones, who came up with Harvey Milk warns that these new demographics bring a decline in political power and the potential for isolation.
Cleve Jones has lived in the Castro neighborhood for nearly 50 years, almost from the day he graduated from high school in Phoenix and hitchhiked to California.
He has been a political and cultural leader in San Francisco, organizing gay men and lesbians when the AIDS epidemic devastated these streets in the early 1980s. He created the nationally recognized AIDS Memorial Quilt from a storefront on Market Street. He was a face of the anger and sorrow that swept the Castro in 1978 after the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to the Board of Supervisors.
Mr. Jones has helped define the Castro, dancing at its gay bars seven nights a week when he was younger, gathering with friends for drinks and gossip as he grew older. To this day, he is recognized when he walks down its sidewalks. “Hi Cleve — I know who you are,” said Lt. Amy Hurwitz of the San Francisco Police Department, after Mr. Jones began to introduce himself.
But in May, Mr. Jones, 67, left for a small home with a garden and apple and peach trees 75 miles away in Sonoma County after the monthly cost of his one-bedroom apartment soared from $2,400 to $5,200.
Across the country, L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhoods in big cities — New York, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco among them — are experiencing a confluence of social, cultural and economic factors, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, that is diluting their influence and visibility. In a few cases, some L.G.B.T.Q. leaders say, the neighborhoods’ very existence is threatened.
“I walk around the neighborhood that encouraged me for so many decades, and I see the reminders of Harvey and the Rainbow Honor Walk, celebrating famous queer and trans people,” Mr. Jones said as he led a visitor on a tour of his old neighborhood, pointing out empty storefronts and sidewalks. “I just can’t help but think that soon there will be a time when people walking up and down the street will have no clue what this is all about.”
Housing costs are a big reason for that. But there are other factors as well.
L.G.B.T.Q. couples, particularly younger ones, are starting families and considering more traditional features — public schools, parks and larger homes — in deciding where they want to live. The draw of “gayborhoods” as a refuge for past generations looking to escape discrimination and harassment is less of an imperative today, reflecting the rising acceptance of gay and lesbian people. And dating apps have, for many, replaced the gay bar as a place that leads to a relationship or a sexual encounter.
Mr. Jones is not happy about leaving this corner of San Francisco, but said he had little choice. He had lived in his Castro apartment for 11 years before his landlord asserted that he forfeited his rent control protections by living in Sonoma County, effectively forcing him out by more than doubling his rent. He said he liked having the getaway of his home in Guerneville, but had considered himself a city person from the day he arrived here as a teenager from Phoenix.
“Everything good in my life has come out of this neighborhood,” he said.
Photo by Piotr Musioł on Unsplash
