Groundbreaking LGBTQ-owned housing complex opens in New York City
The Queens apartment complex fulfills a 30-year-dream for its owner, transgender activist Ceyenne Doroshow.
New York City’s first-ever LGBTQ-owned and maintained residency has opened in Queens, 30 years after the owner first conceived of the groundbreaking idea.
The complex was purchased by Ceyenne Doroshow, a trans woman who founded Gay and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society (GLITS), and now serves as the organization’s co-director.
As reported by CNN, Doroshow reflected on her long journey from inception to installation during the complex’s opening ceremony on Friday, Nov. 13.
“Thirty years of a dream, of doing something like this, but not just doing it, putting us in an area, in a location where we don’t have to run,” she said.
Doroshow identifies education as a core aspect of society, which led her to convert the building’s basement into a learning center due to her belief that education forms “the key and the base to everything you need in this world.”
Doroshow said the complex “was created out of love,” noting that “each apartment will have and be — created, and painted and styled — by a designer, an interior designer…. [Furnishings] were donated from Disney hotels. This is an act of love.”
Doroshow founded GLITS in hopes of aiding people across the globe, especially those within the LGBTQ+ community she proudly identifies as part of.
“My community is being hunted all around the world,” she said. “If I’m going to have a mission and a statement, my mission has always been to change the lives of my community, to infuse and get young people to rethink what a career is, to invest in ourselves so we can see a better future.”
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