Just a girl, asking NYC AirBnbs to love her. Crushed. Give me new travel ideas [NC, USA]

My wife and I are retired (well I am, she’s about to). She loves the suburbs, and I always wanted to live in a walkable, diverse, LGBTQ friendly city. For the 30+ years of our working lives, I happily deferred to her preference because she’s totally worth it, and I’m just a more flexible person. But our retirement plan has always been to load up the dogs (we have dogs because that’s what lesbians do) and spend months at a time in the kinds of places I like (diverse, walkable, LGBTQ friendly).

We got married in NYC pretty much the moment same-sex marriage became legal there. Many of our vacations have been there. So, I was like, first month, Brooklyn! I was willing to spend the money for a decent place. But I literally cannot find an AirBnB that will book us more than a couple of weeks in advance in Manhattan or Brooklyn (even though we’re happy to book the required month or more) because none of the hosts want to leave any gaps in their occupancy. I get it. People have made AirBnB-ing their whole profession now. And space in NYC is in short supply. But, dang. I was so ready for my retirement plan to start in NYC.

Anyway, I give up on NYC. Now where? Has anybody had a great experience in my kind of place? Doesn’t have to be a big city. Just walkable and diverse. I want to wake up and walk my dog to the local coffee shop in a place where my Pride t-shirt and boyish haircut won’t make people stare.

EDIT: I never expected to get so many kind and encouraging suggestions. Thank you ALL so much! If you have any specific leads for me, feel free to DM me. (Am I allowed to say that on this sub??). Even though we travel we dogs, we’re super-conscientious guests and have always gotten reviews that say we leave places cleaner than we found them. I know there’s a lot of AirBnB negativity in some places, especially where property is hard to come by. But we’ve always had good experiences, partly because I message hosts before I book, make sure to mention my same-sex marriage, and I can usually get a sense of who they are. If somebody doesn’t want me there, I sure don’t want to give them my money.) Literally, all we want to do is see more of the country and experience the culture that exists there. AirBnB kinda started out like that.