Community Climate

This entry describes the concept of residential community climate—what it is, how it is measured, and how it affects LGBTQ people. Although community can be defined in various ways, for the purposes of understanding community climate, a community refers to a geographical region—a town, city, or municipality—bounded by shared local laws, government offices, and political representatives. The community represents the contextual piece of an LGBTQ person’s experiences in a residential district.

The sections that follow explore ways to think about community climate for LGBTQ people and the importance of considering community climate as an indicator of context. After defining and illustrating the idea of community climate, the entry highlights the ways that community climate has been measured in LGBTQ research and summarizes the literature connecting community ...