New U.S. census analysis finds same-sex households more than doubled from 2005 to 2024 in Chicago’s Far Southeast Side, where residents say costs and local community shape the decision to stay—or return.
When Kenny Dillon locks up after a day at his Hegewisch salon, he isn’t just thinking about the next appointment. He’s thinking about what it means to live openly in the neighborhood where he grew up—and to do it with someone who shares his life.
Dillon. who grew up in Hegewisch in the 1970s. now lives there with his boyfriend. David McCormick. and runs All American Style. He said that when he moved back, he wasn’t trying to shrink himself to fit the past. “When I moved back, I was not moving back and going to be the same person … I was going to be moved back as me,” Dillon said.
That personal story sits inside a broader shift. Over the last 20 years, the Far Southeast Side has seen steep growth in same-sex households, according to Census data analyzed for this report.
In Chicago, the population of same-sex households has increased by about 72%. But in the southeastern cluster of mostly Latino. Black and working-class communities that the census groups together—South Shore. South Chicago. East Side. Hegewisch and South Deering—the number of same-sex households has more than doubled between 2005 and 2024.
The 2024 figures are stark: almost 2% of all households—977 couples—are same sex in that cluster, according to 2024 census data.
Residents who were interviewed pointed to cost as a major factor. For some people, the price of living on Chicago’s Far Southeast Side compared to “gayborhoods” on the North Side has helped make the decision to settle feel practical, not temporary.
Zooming in across neighborhoods, people who said they grew up in the area described choosing to return so they could be surrounded by a place that already knew them. For Dillon, it meant coming back and living “as me”—not as an edited version of himself.
The result is a quieter kind of visibility than a headline moment. Over time, couples aren’t just moving through. They’re planting roots—changing the everyday story of these blocks as the count of same-sex households climbs.
Dillon’s salon in Hegewisch is open to the public, but the neighborhood’s shift is about more than storefronts. It’s about who feels like they can stay, and who feels like staying makes sense when the cost of living is part of the equation—and when a community can hold you as you are.
As those households have grown, the Far Southeast Side has become a place where some LGBTQ couples aren’t just visiting the future. They’re building it in the same neighborhoods they once left.
Chicago Far Southeast Side LGBTQ couples same-sex households Census data Hegewisch South Shore South Chicago East Side South Deering