 We were shocked back in July on a Sunday morning to wake up to calls that our signs on the building had been vandalized. Every single sign on this massive long construction fence had been defaced with horrible anti-gay threats and anti-gay words in every way. So I think people think of Massachusetts and Boston as very liberal places, but what we found out talking to LGBTQ elders is that so many members of our community are forced back into the closet as they age, and there just aren't places for older folks to age in place that celebrate our community and that celebrate LGBTQ elders and all of their fabulous selves. So this is what's missing in the whole range of senior housing that's available, and also we need lots more affordable senior housing. That's my apartment right there. And I was living in a building on Mass Amul. And I think the girl upstairs, she's blacker, lady, and she didn't have a filter. And I remember her telling the people in the stairs, I came up the stairs, came in and she was on the stairs, and she was saying that this guy's a faggot apartment too. He's a faggot. Where I was living in Mass Amul, it has a thing with all the drug dealers and drugs. It's called methadone mile. Did you hear about that? Yeah. One block away. But anyway, the landlord wanted to, I've been here for 15 years, always paid my rent and nothing. And she didn't want, they increased the rent and she didn't want, she wanted more money. So she gave me a notice to evit. And I'm so glad because otherwise I wouldn't moved. And that was the building that had the problems with the people calling me names. But they had all moved out since then. But I moved here for a year. So I want to wait till the pride is open and move here. That's why I don't put no pictures on the walls because look at these walls. I have to paint them if I have holes in them or something like that. So I'm not going to damage the walls and move in there. It is an existing building. It's a school that was built in the 1900s. It's fairly large, approximately 100,000 square feet of interior space. And it will house 74 units. And approximately we're going to have 100 people living in it. We think that some people might live together as couples or as friends or roommates. So we think we're going to be able to house approximately 100 people. You know why? Because... Because it's a compliment? Yes, because... Are you still with people? And we dance and we have fun. Good for you. So 10 years ago with some individuals we started gathering information and listening to people and trying to understand people's struggles in the housing as people, LGBT older adults were looking for homes or were already living in some public housing. And the more we asked, the more we found out that there is an absolutely need for a place, a building, a community as we call it, that would support people in their lifestyle and make people live their fullest life as they get older. And I raised a daughter. I didn't come out until my daughter was two years old and I got divorced because I knew that marriage just wasn't going to thrive. And I knew I couldn't have any more children in that marriage. But I didn't really know that I was a lesbian until then. And then I found relationships with women were more of what I wanted. I'm not in a relationship now and it's interesting, I feel like I'm done. I feel like I'm done but I'm open to other things. But I just have a community of friends who are all kinds of things, you know. And being accepted is really cool. I came to Hyde Park almost eight years ago. I wanted to have my own space, a home that, because I was in a condo and it was group decisions and I just got tired of that and I wanted to be in my own spot. And I like to do art and I knew I needed space to do art. So I came to Hyde Park and very quickly I found a community here so I started on this project working with removing things from the building keeping a list of what was in there. We worked toward getting it distributed to Boston school teachers and then eventually to the communities. And then they asked me if I would be on one of the committees. And I like being involved. So I am on the Capital Campaign Committee which is seeking to raise funds to do some of the extras for the community that will be here. Especially the incident that we weren't expecting last July where there was vandalism. In that short amount of time on the day that we found out about it we rallied and four and a half hours later we had a crowd of I think it was close to 150 people. And it raised awareness of this program and people sent in donations because they'd heard of it. But I think what showed us and really drove home is how needed our community is. How much we need the pride and how much we need to be out and proud and courageous about who we are because the only way that we're going to protect people from the kind of hatred that we saw that day is by the community saying, there's so much love here. There's so much acceptance here that there's no room for hate. And that's what we really think the pride represents for Hyde Park and what we hope it will continue to represent as we build more housing like this in other communities.