Older LGBTQ+ people face isolation, discrimination in care systems

Mindy Meleyal has spent 75 years watching the world change for people like her. She came of age when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. She saw decriminalization arrive in 1967. She married her wife Linda in 2014, when same-sex marriage finally became law. But now, in her seventies, she finds that the identity she fought to claim openly has become something she is expected to hide.

A new report from the Centre for Ageing Better documents what Mindy and thousands of other older LGBTQ+ people already know: that growing old in Britain while LGBTQ+ means facing isolation, financial strain, and poorer health outcomes than heterosexual peers. More troubling still, many are concealing who they are when they need care most. Adam Porter, a housing development manager at the LGBT Foundation, hears these stories regularly. He has met older people who remove wedding photos when a carer visits, who take down pride flags from their own homes, who hide the fundamental facts of their lives in exchange for the help they need. Some have had carers offer to pray for them, to cure them of their sexuality. The fear is not paranoid. It is rooted in lived experience.

The numbers tell part of the story. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of people over 50 identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual in the UK jumped by roughly a third—from about 340,000 to nearly 460,000. In the same period, the heterosexual over-50 population grew by just 4 percent. More than half of gay and bisexual men aged 65 and above live alone, compared with less than a quarter of heterosexual men their age. Bisexual women aged 50 to 64 are twice as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to live alone. Only half of gay and bisexual men over 50 say they definitely have someone who would help them if they needed it—14 percentage points lower than heterosexual men.

These gaps exist partly because of history. A person born in 1950 would have been in their fifties before same-sex couples could legally adopt. Many older LGBTQ+ people have no children. They are more likely to be estranged from their families. When Mindy was hospitalized after a stroke, a nurse called Linda her husband. It was not a small mistake. It was a sign of what kind of care environment awaited her, what training—or lack of it—the staff had received. Mindy wondered then what would happen if she needed more help, if she had to move into a facility, if she had to spend the rest of her life hiding.

Norman Goodman came out as bisexual at 68, after his wife Marilyn died. He and Marilyn had no children. He has no immediate family nearby. His support system is his partner Tony and what he calls his "chosen family"—friends and neighbors who have become his safety net. But Norman worries about what happens when independence fades. He has heard stories of gay people in nursing homes treated terribly. He believes nurses, doctors, and carers need training on how to care for LGBTQ+ people with dignity.

Chek Min-Ong, 77, and his late partner Tim discussed their future knowing one of them would eventually be alone. When Tim died five months after they moved into Tonic, London's first LGBTQ+ retirement home, Min found the community he and Tim had hoped for. "It is what Tim and I always wanted," he says, "that we'd never have to explain ourselves." Tonic opened in 2021 with 19 apartments. Manchester's Kindred House, set to open next year, will offer 80 self-contained apartments with 24/7 care available and staff trained in LGBTQ+ inclusion. Similar schemes exist in Spain, Sweden, Germany, the US, and Canada. In the UK, they remain rare.

Mindy, who advises on Kindred House's development, understands what these spaces mean. "It's important that you can go, that you think, 'You know what, I could live there because I know the staffing, the ethics, the rules, everything about the place has been put together from an LGBTQ+ focus,'" she says. But the Centre for Ageing Better warns that demand will soon outstrip supply. As younger generations of LGBTQ+ people age, and as the over-50 population continues to grow, the shortage of specialist services will deepen. Without more schemes like Kindred House, without training and awareness spreading through mainstream care settings, an entire generation faces the prospect of spending their final years back in the closet—hiding in plain sight in their own homes.