Homebuyers can find Triangle-based realtor Jamie Ferguson on gayrealestate.com, where she is on call to help LGBTQ+ clients find somewhere to live comfortably. It can be nerve-racking for anyone to look for their home in an unfamiliar place; if you are queer, there can be added uncertainty when that place isn’t forthright about supporting the gay community.
“I am a queer woman and I know that there are always ways to make things easier for people,” Ferguson said. “For me, I’m like, OK, if I know how they feel, they don’t have to tell me 90% of the story. I know it, I get it.”
Ferguson said some Triangle cities, like Durham, have historically been more vocal about inviting the queer community in, while others, like Cary, were seen as more conservative, only starting to make statements of acceptance in recent years.
Annual scorecards from the national nonprofit Human Rights Campaign (HRC) provide a look at how some municipalities in the Triangle have shifted in support of LGBTQ+ equality over time. Most have improved from low ratings or remained in a high range.
Ferguson said now that most of the Triangle has achieved an equitable baseline, she sees queer homebuyers looking to live all over. Ferguson said her job isn’t to tell people where the best place to live is if you’re gay; it’s to give clients the tools to figure out where they’re most comfortable and find them a home wherever they want to live.
“There were areas that stepped out further back, and so they did, in the beginning, absolutely hold the flag for being where people wanted to go,” Ferguson said. “But now I feel like it’s changed in the last 10 to 15 years, and it’s everywhere. We’re everywhere.”
Every year since 2012, the HRC issues its Municipal Equality Index (MEI) for a number of cities across the country, assessing over 500 this past year. These cities are selected based on criteria including size, status as a state capital, and same-sex couple population. In North Carolina, the MEI rates 10 municipalities: Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Raleigh, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem.
The index uses 49 criteria to examine how “inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ people who live and work there,” according to the HRC’s website. The HRC rates municipalities based on their nondiscrimination laws, employee rights, programs, law enforcement, and local leadership’s positions on LGBTQ+ equality.
In North Carolina’s 2025 breakdown, released in November, the HRC website states that overall North Carolina municipalities exemplified how to support LGBTQ+ individuals at the local level, even if the state legislature has enacted laws like 2023’s House Bill 805, which restricted access to gender-affirming medical care for minors, overriding municipalities’ ability to offer inclusive healthcare policies for transgender family members of employees.
Despite these limitations, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro have traditionally passed the MEI with flying colors, largely earning A’s in the past five years after satisfying most of the HRC’s core litmus tests: having nondiscrimination ordinances, promoting workplace inclusivity and benefits, having LGBTQ+ liaisons and commissions, and outwardly supporting equality. (The MEI scores cities out of 100, with “flex,” or bonus, points allowing additional opportunities to score—but final scores cannot surpass 100. The HRC does not assign explicit letter grades.)
In the Triangle, Durham has long been a standout; in 2021 rankings, it was the only Triangle town to score a 100 overall while also having points for transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits and nondiscrimination protections for housing specifically.
“Durham will try things well, well, well ahead of the rest of our areas around,” Ferguson said. “And they did very much publicly invite the queer community years ago.”
Over the years, there’s been a gap in the Triangle MEI scores: Wake County towns typically lag behind their Durham and Orange neighbors. From 2021 through 2024, Cary has had an F. The town crawled from a 12/100 in 2021 to a 49/100 in 2024 and finally saw a big jump this past year when it earned a 72/100—a C, using a 10-point grading scale. Raleigh is less severe but still somewhat low. It received a B rating (85/100) for LGBTQ+ equality this past year, but it had a D in 2021 and teetered from a C to a B in subsequent years.
In 2019, Jonathan Lambert-Melton was elected as the first openly LGBTQ+ City Council member in Raleigh’s history. He said the rubric has served as a guide to address gaps in the city’s services and branding identity, such as when Raleigh was the first Wake County municipality to vote to adopt the nondiscrimination ordinance in 2021, or when the city worked to add an LGBTQ+ liaison in the police department, which bumped up its 2022 score.
In addition to state law, Lambert-Melton said that he also thinks the variation in Raleigh’s score from year to year (and apparent gaps in scores from city to city) can depend on how the HRC itself grades—whether it’s evolving wording for individual criteria, using intentionally rigorous grading so that municipalities do not get complacent, or interpreting the way a city reports something to the HRC during the voluntary reporting process. He said these variables can lead to discrepancies in scoring, such as when having an LGBTQ+ liaison disappear from the 2022 and 2023 scorecards, despite remaining on the city’s staff. He also said that services the city helps provide through grant programs and public partnerships may not be tracked as city provisions.
“The work is being done. I guess it’s just how it’s being captured and reported and scored sometimes,” he said.
Raleigh’s Wake County neighbor Cary has made a comeback in recent years. Similarly as in Raleigh, Mayor Pro Tempore Lori Bush said the boost from Cary’s longtime F ranking to its C in 2025 came after engaging with the HRC’s rubric as a framework to enact new policies, but also from responding to the HRC’s voluntary survey about the unreported work they were doing.
Following Raleigh’s lead in 2022, Cary adopted the Wake County nondiscrimination ordinance, which has been a sticking point for some Wake towns. Though not scored by the HRC, Holly Springs took four years to adopt the ordinance, and a handful of Wake’s 12 municipalities still haven’t.
Also in 2022, Cary saw new points for providing trans-inclusive healthcare benefits (which were later rescinded after HB 805 passed) and adding its Human Relations, Inclusion, and Diversity Advisory Board in 2020. Notably, the town also jumped from a 0/8 in 2021 to an 8/8 in 2022 for local leadership on LGBTQ+ equality—which includes both city officials’ public stances and legislative efforts.
In 2025, for its big push, Cary earned points for policy strides, like enforcing nondiscrimination in city employment. It also racked up flex points for adding programs that support LGBTQ+ youth, LGBTQ+ people experiencing homelessness, and LGBTQ+ older adults. The HRC does still identify gaps in Cary when it comes to robust nondiscrimination enforcement and LGBTQ+ liaisons to the city executive and police department (despite the town having a human resources manager).
“I’m proud of the progress, but we’re not done,” Bush said. “The next phase is about increasing our reach and the trust to make sure that the protections that we put are felt in people’s daily lives.”
Though state limitations to LGBTQ+ rights are the be-all and end-all, the HRC provides a helpful handbook for where LGBTQ+ residents have the most nondiscrimination protections and support programs—even if the scoring is flexible. Ferguson said that since the Triangle has improved its offerings overall, whether you’re in Durham or Cary, community is where you make it.
“Now, we are a melting pot of people. It is no longer a one-tune band,” she said.
Comment on this story at [email protected].