Gentrification and the Shifting Geography of Male Same-Sex Couples

The changing geography of male same-sex couples over the last decade has important implications for LGBTQ families and communities. While recent scholarship clearly documents that male same-sex couples are becoming more geographically diffuse, less clear is what locational factors drive this change. Some explanations center on the increased cost of housing in established “gayborhoods.” Others point to increasing social acceptance of same-sex couples opening up new residential opportunities. This paper explores these explanations in a spatial regression model that uses neighborhood attributes to predict change in the neighborhood concentration of male same-sex couples, while also accounting for spatial spillover effects from neighboring areas. Data come from the 2009–2013 and 2014–2018 American Community Surveys for four metropolitan areas: New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Results suggest that gentrification of gayborhoods is generally associated with declining concentrations of male same-sex couples in these areas. But across the four metropolitan areas, there are notable differences in whether same-sex concentrations are more sensitive to housing values, rental costs, or the supply of affordable housing units. Outside of gayborhoods, increasing housing costs are generally associated with increasing same-sex concentrations. These findings add nuance to our understanding of gentrification’s impacts on same-sex couples and affirm that housing affordability is a key concern among same-sex populations. We discuss the theoretical and methodological challenges of continued study in this area.