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Gender-Inclusive Housing: A Second Look
2020). Education about the needs of LGBTQ+ students is critical. Education about
gender-inclusive housing should also be provided for those outside residence life who
interface with the public and will need to respond to questions from students and
their families, including communications and marketing professionals, admissions
and campus tour guide staff, and orientation leaders.
IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The researchers plan to continue with follow-up studies to track the growth and changes
in gender-inclusive housing on college and university campuses, comparable to the
DeCoster (1979) study of coeducational housing. In doing so, they will be able to explore
whether the emergence and implementation of GIH is like that of coeducational
housing, as suggested by Bleiberg (2004) and Willoughby and colleagues (2012). As
GIH matures, questions included on the instrument may be added or modified.
In addition, future research should explore the reasons institutions are increasingly
adopting gender-inclusive housing and the impact of GIH on the students living
there. Of particular importance is the need to examine whether this housing option is
successfully addressing issues of safety, comfort, and sense of belonging for LGBTQ+
students, as this is the often-stated goal of adopting a GIH program. Finally, gender-inclusive
housing is not necessarily limited to LGBTQ+ students. Further inquiries could
be focused on the reasons that cisgender students choose GIH and the impact that
living in this housing has on them.
Similar to previous findings (Taub et al., 2016), the current study found that parent/family
and public relations concerns were identified as obstacles to implementing
GIH. Future research could explore the nature of these concerns and the frequency
with which they are encountered in practice as well as the ways institutions have addressed
and overcome these obstacles. Additionally, scholars could explore how parent
and family attitudes about gender-inclusive housing change over time.
CONCLUSION
Calls from the literature for campus housing and residence life professionals to become
more responsive to and inclusive of the needs of LGBTQ+ students have been
clear (Pryor & Hoffman, 2020). Campuses should also make their GIH policies more
widely known and easier to find (Marine et al., 2019; Nicolazzo et al., 2018). Although
much remains to be done in areas such as programs, policies (Marine et al., 2019;
Nguyen et al., 2020), and visibility (Marine et al., 2019; Nicolazzo et al., 2018), the
findings from this study indicate that progress is being made. Continued conversation,
assessment, and evaluation, informed by the growing literature on gender-inclusive
housing and the needs of LGBTQ+ students, will be necessary as housing professionals
continue to work to make campus housing accessible, safe, and inclusive for
all students. 
24 The Journal of College and University Student Housing

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