In a neighbourhood called Croix-Rousse — the Silk Workers' Hill — in the heart of Lyon, a building has quietly done something radical.
It has given a generation of people a place to simply be.
La Maison de la Diversité — France's first social housing project designed specifically for LGBTQ+ seniors — has opened its doors. And for the people moving in, many of whom spent their entire adult lives hiding who they were, it represents something that is difficult to put into words and easy to understand: safety.
The residence, at 65 Rue de Belfort, offers 16 apartments — a mix of T1 and T2 units, ranging from 24 to 42 square metres, with seven designated as social housing and all priced below market rate. There are 120 square metres of communal spaces: an activity room, a lounge-library, an office, a laundry room, and a large shared garden. One apartment is reserved for a young person aged 18 to 30, and another for guests — ensuring the house isn't isolated from the broader community, and that generations mix.
The project was built by the association Les Audacieuses & Les Audacieux — 'the Audacious Ones' — in partnership with Croix-Rouge Habitat, Métropole de Lyon, and the City of Lyon. It was inspired by similar models in Germany, including Lebensort Vielfalt in Berlin, and designed for LGBTQ+ seniors, for seniors living without family support, and for older people living with HIV.
The need is real and documented. LGBTQ+ seniors experience significantly higher rates of loneliness and social isolation than their heterosexual peers. Many spent decades in environments — workplaces, families, care homes — where being themselves was dangerous or impossible. Standard senior housing often replicates those environments. In communal settings where residents share rooms, common spaces, or care routines, older LGBTQ+ people frequently return to hiding — 'going back into the closet' in later life, just as they'd hoped to finally be free of it.
La Maison de la Diversité was built to make that reversal unnecessary.
Residents began moving in from August 2025, with the formal inauguration in October. Since then, the building has been doing what it was designed to do: hosting activities, building friendships, creating the kind of chosen family that many LGBTQ+ seniors built throughout their lives but feared losing as they aged.
'A new chapter of safety, solidarity, and love,' one resident described it.
France is the first country to build this model in the social housing sector. It almost certainly won't be the last. 🏠🌈