The Senior Citizen Boom : Demographics: The Valley’s elderly population will be among the fastest growing of any in L.A. by the year 2000.

When Nahoma Boxerman and her husband visited the San Fernando Valley in 1957 for their niece’s wedding, they fell in love with the suburban community. During their visit, he found a job in Van Nuys, she found a house, and they never went back to New York.

“Everywhere, there were young families, people left their doors open, and we had lots of wide open spaces,” Boxerman said.

They raised a family in the ultimate all-American suburb. Then in 1986, her husband, Abe, died, and now she might have to rent out a room in her house to ease her money problems and her loneliness.

Boxerman, 74, is an example of the postwar boom of families who settled in the Valley and are growing old in the same neighborhood. By the year 2000, the Valley’s senior citizen population is expected to be among the fastest growing of any in Los Angeles. Private business, public agencies and area hospitals are gearing up for services that will allow the elderly to grow old while living at home.

Within the next few weeks, the city Department of Aging is planning to announce some innovative ways to get the word out about senior programs specifically for minorities.

“We are developing a triage-type system where we train people to go out in the field, identify the needs of the elderly and then prepare and care for them as they live out of their home,” said Faye Washington, general manager of the Department of Aging.

“We probably should have started this 20 years ago, because we knew the baby boomers were getting older. But traditionally government doesn’t deal with a problem until it’s an immediate problem,” Washington said.

The number of Los Angeles residents older than 65 is expected to hit 680,000 in the next decade--a jump of 24%. And the number of people older than 75 in Los Angeles is expected to increase 64% in that same period.

“We are facing a senior crisis in the ‘90s,” Washington said. Only a year ago did city officials begin emphasizing long-term care as a top priority for the elderly by earmarking $91,000 for staff and planners. “People are aging in place, and we are going to have to prepare for this.”

That means housing, transportation and social activity will have to be geared toward the geriatric population, and officials say the Valley is sorely lacking in those areas. The solution has been to keep the elderly living independently for as long as possible rather than going into a more expensive institutional setting.

“Lots of single widows like me are wondering what to do with their homes,” Boxerman said. “I can’t move out, because rents for one bedroom go for $600 to $1,000,” and her Social Security is only $630 a month. “I’ve considered leaving my house, but I think I’ll add a bathroom and rent a room out.” She said she would seek a low-interest home loan available to seniors to add the extra bath.

By tapping into local programs, Boxerman can get free dead-bolt locks for her house, be driven to low-cost social dinners and even find a roommate through a free senior citizen matching service.

“We have so many services, but people have to know about them and use them,” said Dorie Gradwohl, director of the city’s East Valley Multipurpose Center and Valley Storefront in North Hollywood.

“Large numbers of seniors are moving to the Valley, because their children live out here and they want to be closer,” Gradwohl said. “Crime is thought to be lower here, the cost of apartments are cheaper, and there are a lot of good retirement hotels, board and care homes and convalescent hospitals in the Valley.”

Services for the elderly in the Valley are provided by three groups, which compete with each other for grants. Gradwohl is in charge of services on the east side through the multipurpose center run by Jewish Family Services. Valley Interfaith Council, based in Van Nuys, caters to the central and northeast Valley, and the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly--or ONE--in Reseda is in the west.

Nearly 2,000 free meals are served daily to elderly people at home or in 18 locations throughout the Valley. The groups reach 60,000 seniors a year with their services--a fraction of the people requiring help.

“The centers reach maybe a third of the need,” said Tony DeClue, assistant general manager of the Department of Aging. “We have more seniors in Los Angeles than some states have people. And it’s only going to increase in numbers. We’re trying to prepare for it.”

The city has an $18.5-million budget for the elderly that goes for such needs as health screening, glasses, nutrition and programs to make homes accessible to wheelchairs and other needs as residents get older. Among the programs the city is starting is a free emergency response system for 880 handicapped seniors.

City experts on aging are planning statewide and national conferences to discuss the problems they face, and a meeting on many of these issues was held by the directors of the National Organization for Aging last weekend in Nashville, Tenn.

The budget for the city’s Department of Transportation senior citizens services has remained constant at $16 million for the past few years. These funds are used primarily to pay for taxi and Val-Trans services that chauffeur the elderly. Val-Trans, which in the past has received widespread criticism because it was often overbooked, has recently improved its service, decreasing the response time from a weeklong waiting period to a three-day waiting period before rides, DeClue said.

The mayor’s office has commissioned a study on elderly transportation services that is expected to be completed by late summer.

“Our senior centers have become country clubs for the low- and middle-income,” DeClue said. “We will need more.”

Barry Smedberg, executive director of Valley Interfaith Council, has watched elderly programs become overpopulated. Home-served meals increased from 630 last year to 730 this fiscal year and a projected 1,155 orders next year.

“The attitude toward the elderly has to change,” Smedberg said. “Our society has been oriented toward the young; that will change in the next 10 years. Also, we have a population that doesn’t accept change very well--change in their neighborhoods and their lives.”

The answer is not to pour money into senior services, Smedberg said. “What we need to do is build relationships between the old and young,” he said. “There must be a feeling that we’re all in this together and that when we pass each other on the streets we must show we care. No matter how much money is in all the programs we run, if we don’t build some sort of family, we have nothing.”

Smedberg said he plans to start specific programs that will unify the elderly with children and teen-agers in group activities.

Developing a new family among her elderly friends keeps Betty Jane Ladd, 63, working for the city at the Bernardi Senior Center in Van Nuys, where she is a case manager for senior clients. “It’s nice to visit people 85 years old, and they call me ‘young lady,’ ” Ladd said. City statistics show that more than 95% of all women older than 85 have suffered at least one broken bone, so Ladd said medical care is always on her clients’ minds.

“A big concern people have is going into the hospital,” Ladd said. “I was just in the hospital myself, and I know they have exceptional doctors in the Valley, but it gets expensive.” Also, some doctors won’t take patients on Medicare, leaving the elderly to take long trips to public hospitals.

Many seniors rush into retirement homes because they cannot cope with the rush of civilization. Some centers teach classes in everyday situations, such as how to work a videocassette recorder or cook with a microwave.

Boxerman said she sometimes feels overwhelmed by new technology, but she stays on top of it through the senior citizen activist group Gray Panthers. She also teaches Jewish religion classes, sings with a choral group, volunteers for the Coalition for National Health Services and helps with environmental causes.

“Safety is also one of our biggest concerns,” Boxerman said. “I’m upset that I can’t walk alone at night anymore and need three locks on my door. My next-door neighbor had a VCR stolen. When I get something nice now, I don’t mention it to anyone. There’s a feeling all around with young and old alike that you have to do everything now because we won’t live long enough to do it.”

Lillian Siff found a new career after her husband of 47 years died eight years ago. “I had never worked, and suddenly I found myself with all this time,” Siff said. She now works for Home Secure, a group that tells senior citizens how to make their living quarters safe from burglars.

“My story is the same as a lot of people in the Valley,” Siff said. “My husband and I moved to Sherman Oaks from the Miracle Mile area. He passed on, and I had to find something to do.”

Keeping active and challenged is difficult for senior centers, said ONE Director Lola Rabow, whose 40 classes for seniors range from quilting to the lambada. But the biggest growing need has been in-home care for seniors who can’t make it out on their own.

“We go in to help them clean their house, bathe them, do the shopping, bring meals and take them to the doctors,” Rabow said. “Keeping them in their home is a priority, because the only other alternative is an institution.”

Estelle Cooper, executive director of the Valley Senior Service and Resource Center in Reseda, said service groups like ONE should not be competing for money. “I spend my energy looking for money and writing grants when I’d rather help these people who are going through tremendous losses. These people have lost their mates, their friends, their health, their homes, their finances, and we want to preserve some dignity for them.”

ONE moved to larger facilities a year ago to accommodate the needs of seniors.

“We’re finding it difficult to keep up, we have dozens of people on our waiting lists,” Cooper said.

All the senior center directors said shared housing is the most feasible answer for the future senior population in the Valley. Seniors will have to share homes or live in cooperative apartments, where they live together but have their own unit.

“The biggest fear about growing old is that no one will care,” Gradwohl said. She said a man died last year in a low-cost North Hollywood complex with a manager who was supposed to take care of all the elderly tenants. No one knew of the death for weeks, until maggots infested all the apartments through the air-conditioning vents. Practically everyone moved out, and many tenants availed themselves of the mental health services offered at Valley Storefront, Gradwohl said.

“What anyone will want, whether it’s the elderly now or 10 years from now, is to know someone is around to help,” Gradwohl said. “It will be up to organizations like us to see if we can handle the demand.”