Germans are getting older and older, and this particularly affects gay men, who are usually left without a family in old age - and without children to look after them. There are still too few housing projects for homosexual senior citizens in Germany. One ray of hope is the first multi-generation house that opened in Berlin in early summer.
Almost 30 years have passed since Peter was diagnosed with HIV. The Welshman is now 70 and has seen many friends and acquaintances die of AIDS. Until his stroke just over a year ago, he lived in the St. Georg district of Hamburg. But the lift was too small for the wheelchair and Peter had to look for alternatives. He specifically researched gay housing projects because he didn't want to live in one of the usual retirement homes. But he didn't find anything in Hamburg, not even in London. He only found what he was looking for in Berlin. He now has a room in the "Lebensort Vielfalt" care flat share.
The Charlottenburg multi-generation house was opened just a few months ago. On a total of five floors, there are 24 flats in various sizes - mostly wheelchair-accessible and equipped with barrier-free bathrooms - as well as a shared flat for people in need of care. Men between 31 and 85 live here. In addition to a garden, common room and a café, Lebensort Vielfalt also has Germany's largest lending library with books, brochures etc. on the subject of LGBTIQ; the gay counselling service - the project's sponsor - is also located in the building.
The first ideas for such a housing project were already being considered almost ten years ago - but sometimes it failed due to lack of money, sometimes a housing association offered properties in less attractive areas.
"Nobody wanted to move there!" says 67-year-old Bernd Gaiser, who, like more than 30 residents of Lebensort Vielfalt, has now found a home in the centre of Charlottenburg. The tenant spokesman explains that the multi-generational house is open to everyone: Homos and heteros, regardless of gender. However, the five women here are clearly in the minority, and there is only one lesbian among them. There were also plans to accommodate a flat share for transgender people in one of the larger flats, but the potential residents fell out before moving in. Even a straight family was once interested in one of the flats - it is not known why this ultimately failed. Perhaps they didn't want to leave their 17-year-old son to a horde of gay men, Bernd and his neighbours Klaus and Jürgen speculate smugly.
Around half of the residents have HIV. Among them are 48-year-old Klaus and his partner. Klaus appreciates the fact that he has very short distances to travel when he needs to talk to someone or obtain information - the psychosocial counselling service is located in the same building. He and his partner only recently moved from Hesse to Berlin. Although there were once plans for a similar project in Frankfurt, the "PfleGAYheim" never materialised.
Diversity as a place to live is unique - you have to search for something of comparable size for a very long time. A "model project that is unique in Europe", was how Mayor Wowereit described it at the opening ceremony. It took six years to prepare and one and a half years to build. A total of around six million euros was invested, over half of which came from the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin.
Rents here are around the neighbourhood average. Bernd pays 611 euros warm for his 47 square metres. However, he also lives at the top in a nice maisonette flat - the flats on the 3rd and 4th floors are slightly cheaper. His neighbour, 67-year-old Jürgen, enquired at various Berlin institutions before moving in. But monthly fees of up to 1,700 euros put him off - not including any care services. But there is also the other side - not everyone can afford to live in a "place of diversity". Many prospective tenants have been put off because of the rents. So Jürgen got his flat quite quickly - he was originally 76th on the long waiting list.
There are few successful projects nationwide that are comparable. In Dresden, an attempt was made to establish a gay and lesbian housing project. According to co-initiator Horst Rasche, they had to abandon the idea because they couldn't find enough tenants. "Younger people are hardly interested in a housing project, while older people find it difficult. They are often not out or even still married." Today, only three of the building's 14 residents are homosexual.
In Cologne there is the Villa Anders. The non-profit housing project is aimed at lesbians, gays and transgender people. Singles and couples are welcome, as are rainbow families. The rosaAlternative, or "rosaAlter" for short, was opened in a central location in Munich in 2010. The shared flat has five single rooms of around 17 square metres and two rooms for couples measuring around 32 square metres. The kitchen and bathroom are shared. The project is run by AIDS-Hilfe, which is located in the same building. This is a great advantage for the residents - currently only men with HIV live here. In principle, however, the project is open to anyone who would like to live here, says Manuel Otten, who works as a social pedagogue at AIDS-Hilfe and is responsible for the residents' concerns as a moderator.
In addition to the shared flat, the upper floor also offers assisted living. "In advanced stages of the illness, you can simply move within the building," says Otten. "But it also works the other way round. We once had a resident who made such good progress in the flat with long-term care that he was eventually able to move into the shared flat."
However, the care and nursing services are not the only advantage Otten sees. Homosexuals often don't have it easy in "normal" retirement homes, as he knows from stories told by residents. "Sometimes older gay men end up in a double room with a less tolerant roommate who screens himself off with a curtain so as not to have anything to do with the other person. One gay senior got into trouble with his roommate when he put a picture of his deceased partner next to his bed. But sometimes it's just the situation when an older gay man is sitting at the table with three old ladies at dinner - if the conversation turns to the grandchildren, he can only participate to a very limited extent."
To avoid such situations, there are housing projects such as "rosaAlter", which enable people to age with dignity; no one should feel marginalised. The Berlin multi-generational house also aims to offer people a home regardless of gender, orientation and age, and the diversity living space is a particular success story: there are currently 230 names on the waiting list, and the list is constantly growing. Perhaps a second house will be purchased at some point.
