Town Hall Apartments is the first affordable LGBTQ-friendly senior housing in Chicago. This pioneering initiative was created through a partnership between Heartland Alliance and Center on Halsted. It directly addresses the housing discrimination and isolation that face Chicago's more than 50,000 LGBTQ seniors. For its residents it has been life-changing.

The Milken Institute reports that low-income individuals and people living on a fixed income feel the effects of the nation's affordable housing crisis acutely. Their study, "Age Forward Cities 2030" reports that design lags behind the need with only 3.5% of U.S. homes having the basic universal design elements older or disabled Americans need such as no-step entrances, single-floor living and extra-wide doors and hallways. And walkable, small- to mid-sized housing that's affordable for middle income households can't be found because it no longer exists.

Town Hall Apartments is an important example of how creative collaboration (with Heartland Alliance and Center on Halsted) can fill unmet needs - in this case by adaptive re-use of the historic decommissioned Town Hall police station along with new construction. This initiative demonstrates that it is possible to create homes and communities for people of all ages and life stages to live with dignity.

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