As OUTMemphis prepares for a new home, Focus asks a bigger question: What infrastructure does LGBTQ+ Memphis need for the future?
A groundbreaking usually celebrates what is about to be built.
But the new OUTMemphis headquarters gives Memphis an opportunity to think about what still needs building.
The organization is preparing an approximately 11,000-square-foot Community Center and Headquarters on Cleveland Street, with an anticipated opening in 2027. The project is part of a $12 million Action & Resilience Campaign that includes $7 million for the new facility and $5 million intended as a reserve supporting programs and the organization’s long-term presence.
OUTMemphis says requests for its services have increased 300 percent during the past five years.
Those numbers tell a story larger than one building.
They raise a question that LGBTQ+ Memphis should be asking as it enters 2027: What does our community actually need?
Housing is part of the answer. So are health care, mental health services, youth programs and places where transgender people can find knowledgeable support. But infrastructure can also mean something less obvious: somewhere to eat dinner with other queer people. Somewhere a teenager can spend an afternoon. Somewhere an older LGBTQ+ adult can find community. Somewhere that doesn’t require buying a drink to belong.
It can mean transportation, food, case management and emergency assistance.
And sometimes it simply means having a door you know you can walk through.
More Than a Community Center
OUTMemphis provides a useful place to begin that conversation because its work already crosses many of those lines.
The organization currently offers youth programming, emergency and transitional housing for young adults, HIV-related case management, food assistance, mental health programming and transgender services. Its Youth Empowerment Center provides programming for LGBTQ+ young people, including meals, pantry access and support services.
OUTMemphis also provides free HIV, hepatitis C and syphilis testing during its walk-in hours. Other programs help connect families with affirming care, provide rental assistance to some people living with HIV and provide emergency assistance to qualifying LGBTQ+ adults.
In other words, the demand walking through the doors of an LGBTQ+ community center is rarely just about finding community.
Someone may need housing.
Someone else may need a meal.
Another person may need testing, transportation, therapy or simply a place where they can meet people without having to explain themselves first.
That helps explain why the new headquarters is being designed as more than office space. Plans include private rooms for therapy and case management, dedicated testing space, a food pantry, kitchen and meal facility and flexible spaces where multiple community groups can gather.
But one organization cannot represent an entire community’s needs.
And one new building cannot solve every problem LGBTQ+ people encounter.
What Are We Missing?
Memphis has LGBTQ+ organizations, affirming businesses, health providers, bars, churches, social groups and community events.
The harder question is whether those pieces add up to an infrastructure capable of supporting LGBTQ+ people throughout their lives.
Consider housing.
What happens when a young LGBTQ+ person suddenly has nowhere to live? What happens when a transgender adult encounters discrimination or financial instability? What happens when an LGBTQ+ senior needs assisted living or housing where they feel comfortable being open about their life?
Then there is health care.
Having an LGBTQ+-friendly doctor is important. But a functioning health infrastructure also means affordable primary care, mental health services, HIV prevention and treatment, sexual health care, knowledgeable transgender health services and help navigating insurance and other systems.
Community space presents another challenge.
For generations, bars and clubs have played an important role in LGBTQ+ life. They remain valuable gathering places. But they cannot be the only places where queer community happens.
Young people need somewhere to go.
People in recovery need somewhere to go.
Families need somewhere to go.
Older adults need somewhere to go.
And sometimes people simply want somewhere to sit, talk, organize, learn, eat or meet other LGBTQ+ people without nightlife being the price of admission.
Growing Older Together
Perhaps one of the most important questions for the next decade is what happens as LGBTQ+ Memphis ages.
Many of the people who built today’s community institutions are entering their 60s, 70s and beyond.
What will they need?
That conversation could include housing, transportation, health care, social activities, caregiving, estate planning and assisted living. It also includes something more fundamental: connection.
The generation that fought to create visible LGBTQ+ life in Memphis should not reach retirement only to find that the community has built few systems for growing older within it.
At the other end of the age spectrum, LGBTQ+ young people need their own infrastructure. OUTMemphis says its Youth Empowerment Center currently supports more than 120 young people annually and provides long-term housing to as many as 30 people each year.
The needs of a 16-year-old, a 35-year-old and a 75-year-old LGBTQ+ Memphian may look very different.
A strong community has to make room for all three.
Building Beyond Buildings
Infrastructure sounds like a word for roads, bridges and buildings.
For LGBTQ+ communities, it can mean something broader.
It is the network of places, people and services that makes it possible to stay housed, get medical care, find help during a crisis, meet friends, grow older, raise a family or simply feel connected to the city where you live.
The OUTMemphis groundbreaking gives Memphis a visible example of that investment. A permanent building says that LGBTQ+ people are not temporary residents of this city and that the services they need deserve permanent space.
But perhaps the most useful thing we can do while watching those walls go up is look beyond them.
What do we already have?
What are we missing?
Who isn’t being reached?
And if we were designing LGBTQ+ Memphis for the next generation rather than simply maintaining what previous generations built, what would we create?
Those may be some of the most important questions our community can ask in 2027.
