NYT: Same Sex Couple Challenge CCRC Admissions Policy as Discriminatory

From wedding cakes to retirement communities.  The dissonance here starts from the first mention of the name of the community, “Friendship Village.”  From the New York Times’s Paula Span, comes news of a challenge to an admissions policy as applied to an older, same sex couple seeking to move into a “faith-based” nonprofit Continuing Care Retirement Community or CCRC (also known as Life Plan Communities) near St. Louis:  

The community seemed eager to recruit them, too, offering a lower entrance fee if they signed an agreement promptly. So they paid a $2,000 deposit on a two-bedroom unit costing $235,000. They notified their homeowners association that they’d be putting their house in Shrewsbury, Mo., on the market and canceled a vacation because they’d be moving in 90 days. Ms. Walsh contacted a realtor and began packing.

 

Then came a call from the residence director, asking Ms. Walsh the nature of her relationship with Ms. Nance, 68, a retired professor.

 

Natives of the area, they’d been partners for nearly 40 years. Before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages across the country, they’d had a harborside wedding in Provincetown, Mass.  “I said, ‘We’ve been married since 2009,’” Ms. Walsh replied. “She said, ‘I’m going to need to call you back.’”

 

Last month, the women brought suit in federal court, alleging sex discrimination in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act and the Missouri Human Rights Act.

For the full article, read “A Retirement Community Turned Away These Married Women.”