DALLAS — A new affordable housing apartment complex is coming to Dallas, and it's geared at making sure a specific community feels welcome.
Oak Lawn Place, an affordable residential community is set to open in late July. The building is owned by the Resource Center, one of the largest LGBTQIA+ affirming centers in the country, the Center said in a release.
Oak Lawn Place is an 84-unit apartment complex that includes support for the LGBTQIA+ community.
"They’re not going to be discriminated against," Libby Crank with the Resource Center explained. "They’re not going to have hate speech against them, folks will use their correct pronouns."
Oak Lawn is Dallas’ LGBTQIA+ neighborhood, but it’s so developed now, Crank explained, many members of the community can’t actually afford to live there.
"No...Oak Lawn is way too expensive," Future resident Mike Montalvo told WFAA.
Montalvo said he is leaving a retirement community where he says he never felt welcome.
"I did not hide the fact that I was gay, and there’s a lot of religious people that don’t like that," he said.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Sandra Thompson joined officials from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas to tour the complex Tuesday, which received a $750,000 Affordable Housing Program Grant.
"From our perspective, inclusivity is just as important in housing as anything else," Thompson told WFAA. "We talk affordability, safety, making sure it’s decent, this is all of that. But how you feel and how you live is also important."