GBH Documentary Spotlights LGBTQ+ Elders' Resilience at Historic Boston Housing Community

Living in Pryde examines how residents of New England's first LGBTQ+-welcoming senior housing navigate past struggles and present threats

GBH News' Living in Pryde, a 40-minute documentary exploring the lives of LGBTQ+ seniors at a groundbreaking Boston housing community is now available to watch online. You can watch the film now GBH News's YouTube channel as part of the Local Lens series.

Set in The Pryde—New England's first affordable senior housing community intentionally welcoming to LGBTQ+ residents—the documentary follows elders who came of age during some of the darkest periods for queer Americans. Residents of the former Hyde Park public school building share stories spanning decades of activism, from the AIDS crisis to marriage equality and transgender rights.

The film arrives as LGBTQ+ rights face renewed challenges nationwide. The documentary's subjects, many now in their 70s, were children during McCarthyism's targeting of gay federal workers and young adults when homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness. They didn't see same-sex marriage legalized until they reached their 60s.

These historical obstacles have lasting consequences: LGBTQ+ seniors are twice as likely to live alone as their non-LGBTQ+ peers, and 20 percent have experienced homelessness.

Eddie Whitman, 67, an HIV/AIDS survivor, draws parallels between past and present. "I see what's going on in society now, and I have flashbacks to what it was like in the early part of the AIDS epidemic," he says in the film. "It wasn't just people getting sick and dying, it was hatred that went along with it."

For residents like Thea Iberall, who remarried her wife Shirley Riga last December as protection against potential federal rollbacks, The Pryde represents both sanctuary and solidarity. "We have made a commitment to be living here with other gay people and to stand together," Iberall says. "You have to make your voice larger to be heard. And that is through community."

The GBH News team spent six months with Pryde residents, documenting stories of family rejection, forced closeting, and the trauma of the AIDS epidemic—as well as the power of community in continuing the fight for equality.