It takes a retirement village: gay men and lesbians are turning the idea of retirement on its head with their own homes away from homes.

Arriving home from work one night several years ago, lesbian Joy Silver rounded the corner of her West Village street and was stopped cold by what she saw: flashing lights. "It's New York, so of course your first thought is that police are in your apartment," she says. Silver crept up the block but realized there was no reason to be scared--the light show was pulsating front the second floor of a nearby nursing home for infirm and mostly elderly gay men. They were throwing a wild bash, senior-style, complete with disco balls and go-go boys. "It struck me right there--when I'm that age, that's the party I wants," Silver says.

With the help of investors, she plans to open her own retirement village for gay men and lesbians this summer in Santa Fe, N.M. RainbowVision will sit on 13 acres in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and boast 60 condos and 86 rentals surrounding a country club, a pool, outdoor hot tubs, and a state-of-the-art medical facility. Prices are expected to start at $2,600 to rent or $236,000 to own. Planned entertainment includes gay performers and an annual drag ball.

"Gays and lesbians have always set the trends in fashion and music and design," Silver says. "Now I think we're going to set the trend as to what aging means in America. We're reorganizing the way things look and how to have fun. It's just another arena for us to be creative in."

By the year 2030 between 4 million and 6 million Americans will be elderly and gay, up from 1 million to 3 million as the 21st century began, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "Senior housing appears to be a very dynamic and developing area in the LGBT community," says Gerard Koskovich, staff liaison for the Lesbian and Gay Aging Issues Network. "As the baby-boom generation starts to hit its 50s, a lot of openly LGBT people are looking to the future, wondering where they're going to live, and starting to hope for and make plans for safe, respectful housing that will be available for them when they want it as elders."

For couples, the retirement villages may spare one partner from becoming a primary caregiver. For single gay men and lesbians without family, the promise of assistance is crucial. So is a social life. "Our singles are an interesting array," Silver says. "I've got a single who's 70 in Cleveland. He was a gay man living with a wife. Now that she's passed away, he wants to actually be able to live as a gay man for the first time--at 70. And then we've got a woman who's in a town of 500 where she's the only living lesbian, and she doesn't want to be the only dead lesbian too. She wants to have a chance to meet other women."

Very few retirement spots catering particularly to gays and lesbians exist anywhere at the moment. Most have grown up spontaneously, such as the lesbian trailer parks of Apache Junction, Ariz. Only Florida's Palms of Manasota is specifically dedicated to gay and lesbian seniors. Near Tampa, the Palms opened in 1999 with 21 homes, and a second phase has added another 44.

Valerie Filipski, 54, and 28-year partner Judy Newdom, 58, relocated to the Palms from Massachusetts four years ago. "We said, 'In five to 10 years we're going to come down here, after we retire.' Then we suddenly realized, 'OK, why are we waiting?'" Filipski runs an Internet company front home, and Newdom works at the Sarasota sheriff's department and runs a quarterly dance party for local lesbians, LezDance! "We're not exactly in rocking chairs," Filipski quips.

Although an estimated 10 pink retirement projects are planned to open in a few years--in such cities as Buston, Dallas, and San Francisco--investors have historically been chilly to the idea. It's even more difficult to convince developers to build housing for gay men and lesbians in middle- and lower-income brackets. Public money is limited, and private investors see little chance for return on capital. Projects like San Francisco's Openhouse, a proposed nonprofit multiservice facility of at least 150 units for seniors of mixed incomes, have lingered in limbo for years.

"Clearly there's already a real need for affordable accommodation for older gays and lesbians," says Brian M. Neimark, executive director of Los Angeles's Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing, which is poised to become the nation's first affordable community for queer seniors. After a city council member pledged to build 500 affordable housing units in his district, Neimark's team developed an $18 million, 103-apartment building for which groundbreaking is set this October in Hollywood. "Our community does not have a great deal right now for older adults and needs to start developing somewhere," says Neimark. "I believe this is a great starting point for us, one that will help lead to us building more facilities of all kinds."

No matter the price range, virtually all of the retirement developments for gay men and lesbians will cater to both sexes. "From what we can tell, about two thirds of gay men and lesbians would rather live in a mixed community," says Mary Thorndal, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Gay and Lesbian Association of Retiring Persons. She and partner Veronica St. Claire, the group's CEO, are planning their own retirement development in nearby Palm Springs.

Peter Lundberg, a San Francisco-based developer of another pending project, Our Town, says gay men and lesbians want many of the amenities found in the average retirement village, but with an obvious twist. "We've talked about it jokingly--you know, the attendants in the assisted living facility will be muscle boys with leather shorts and pink tank tops," he says. "One of our focus groups had the idea of theme parties in the dining room once a month: country-western night, leather night, drag night. We'll have fun."

Others share Silver's dream of a safe haven in retirement. "I want to be somewhere where my partner and I can hold bands and sit together with our arms around each other and talk about things without watching every word that we say like we do now," says Gordon Owsley, 63, of Ashland, Ore., who will probably move to RainbowVision along with 14-year partner Les Krambeal, 53. "A lot of our friends who reached a point where they could no longer care for themselves have had to go into [mainstream] assisted living facilities or nursing homes, and what's happened is they've had to go back into the closet in their later years."

Silver adds: "We're going to dance until we can't dance any more, and then whatever still can move, we're going to shake that leg. I think that's very different from the mainstream. That's how we're going to transform what it means to get older."

Allen, is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.