Getting to Heart of Senior-Housing Problems
The project’s very name, Venice Renaissance, promised a rebirth for the vacant lot directly across from my office on Main Street in Venice.
However, most of the neighbors angrily opposed the $30-million project--until the developer offered to include rental units for low-income seniors.
Affordable housing for the elderly is so scarce that suddenly the developer had a green light. I remember him saying: “The seniors are our ace in the hole.”
Seniors had been my ace in the hole too. When I was little, I shared a bedroom, a dresser and a lifetime of memories with my grandmother. Her lap was as wide as the world, and I loved hearing her stories. So, unlike some people who might turn away from seniors, I gravitate toward them. As an adult, one of my best friends had been Goldie, a woman in her 90s.
The “building with that crazy ballerina statue,” as it’s now called, has been open for over a year. It’s a mixed-use building, with retail stores and private residences in a single structure. But even more was mixed: homeowners in half-million-dollar ocean-view condos are living across the hall from seniors in $100- to $300-a-month rentals.
In my wanderings around the neighborhood--to pick up a sandwich, to buy a greeting card--I hadn’t noticed any of the seniors. And as I had read how other developers around the city were copying one aspect of this project--using seniors as their ticket through the permit process--I wondered how the seniors at Venice Renaissance were faring.
Last week I went to find out.
“The older people come in more to visit,” said the owner of the flower shop on the ground floor. When an orchid plant is no longer saleable, she saves it for one of the seniors, a Mrs. Gold-something.
In her working days, Florence Goldstein, 81, was a beautician and bookkeeper. Now she starts each day with a prayer on her balcony: She greets the sun on her right and the mountains on her left.
Although she never thought she’d be fortunate enough to live in such a building (hers is a $200-a-month, 300-square-foot single), a darker side is also present:
“I talk to people in the elevators, the hallways, but. . . . ,” her voice trailed off. Florence writes in a newsletter for the Israel Levin Senior Center, and she wondered if a newsletter might foster intergenerational friendships in the building.
“I don’t know,” she said, “do you think they’d like that?”
In a new, large building--66 condos, 26 rentals--maybe such a newsletter would have supplied the missing bridge last Thanksgiving when a condo owner cooked two turkeys: one for herself, one for the seniors. Because she didn’t know how to offer it to them, instead she ended up handing out turkey sandwiches to the homeless on the beach.
Florence Goldstein also told me that her testimony at a public hearing helped one of the restaurants in the building get its permit. But she has yet to try either the North Beach Bar & Grill or Chaya Venice.
“I understand they are very excellent but expensive,” she said. As she spoke, delicious smells wafted in the background at the senior center where lunch was about to be served: roasted sesame chicken, $1.25.
On the way back to my office, I stopped in at the North Beach Bar & Grill. It’s become one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants but it’s also the sort of place where a grilled chicken lunch costs $13.95.
I asked what happened to the Early Bird Senior Specials that were promised.
“That was part of the community hype,” the owner said. “We told the developers not to hold us to that.”
The next morning Florence called to break our date to show me the orchids she had nursed back to health. There weren’t that many plants anyway, she said.
We had both made a small gesture toward “intergenerational friendship,” yet for some reason Florence had pulled away. Maybe she was nervous because she had mentioned that she had a valuable antique table.
Until I felt the disappointment at our broken date I hadn’t realized that when I had crossed Main Street to meet the seniors, I’d also been looking for another Goldie, another senior friend.
Maybe the Goldies are rare now in a crime-ridden city where people--both young and old--are afraid of opening up and reaching out. Maybe a friendship with a Goldie comes along once in a lifetime.
Gil Borgos, 67, lives next door to Florence. A Venice celebrity, Gil used to do sketches on the boardwalk, but, he says, “It’s all Tarot cards readers now.” He had been living friend to friend, hand to mouth until he got his single.
His room is sparsely furnished--a table, four chairs, a cot, a coffee table, a single bed--yet he feels privileged: This is the first furniture he’s ever owned; the biggest room he’s ever had.
Gil, who is the greeter at 72 Market Street, takes most of his meals there but sometimes he goes downstairs to Chaya Venice for company. He’d go more often if the restaurant had a senior discount. More outspoken than most of the seniors who are so grateful for their clean, secure housing that they are afraid to speak out, Gil said: “We could show an ID at the restaurants. What’s the big deal about that?”
Although he’s met some of the younger condo owners at the pool, he said, “It’s not a togetherness place.” I asked about the other seniors in the building, the ones who aren’t as outgoing as he is, or as active as Florence.
“I think they’re all hiding in their apartments,” he said. “I never see them.”
Brenda Hoppe, the secretary in the developer’s office, has gotten to know the seniors real well. “I have to,” she said. “They’re lonely. They need someone to talk to. They tell me their life story once a week.”
That’s my point. And I bring this up gently because I don’t want to make communication worse. But if developers are using seniors as the ticket to get their projects built, then maybe they also have an obligation to provide the kind of amenities that usually accompany senior housing.
One of the developers involved in Venice Renaissance summed up the problems at project:
“It failed in the retail. The retail doesn’t complement the sociology of the building. There isn’t an affordable coffee shop, or a Thrifty Jr. We actually promised the seniors the restaurants would provide an Early Bird meal.”
He suggested that I go around the corner on Bernard Way, and I would see instantly what else was missing at Venice Renaissance.
Bernard Way Villas, opened since 1983, is a low-income complex for seniors. The front door opens onto a large carpeted living room that has a fireplace, piano, upholstered chairs, a half-dozen card tables, potted plants. On the bulletin board there are notices for a shopping van, free modern dance classes, a lost cat.
I asked Jerry Gilden, a Venice Renaissance condo owner, if this kind of common living room is what the building needs. He barely had time to answer.
“I don’t know what’s going on with anyone else in the building,” said Jerry, “but I’m leaving right now to give Etta the keys to my condo, and show her where I keep the dog stuff.”
Jerry had just gotten a puppy, and when he needed someone to walk it, he’d lucked into Etta Moreaux, a 79-year-old dog lover and one of the seniors who rent in the building. He said that since the management does not allow seniors to have dogs, he hoped his 2-month-old puppy would be a comfort to her, as well. The three of them took their first walk last night.
The next morning while I was soothing a sore throat with a cup of tea, Etta bounced into my life. Almost immediately she said that what she missed at the building was a sense of “people-warmth.”
I asked if a common living room where residents could play the piano, sit in front of a fire, might help.
“Maybe,” she said, distracted. Right then she was more concerned about my throat.
She ran home to get me some herbal drops, and while she was gone I was thinking how a developer can provide the space, but that successful human interaction remains an elusive, mysterious thing. Perhaps contact can be fostered and gentled along by the inclusion of certain amenities, but ultimately the reaching out springs from the people themselves.
I was also remembering a conversation I’d had with Dr. George Morten, a condo owner. Morten told me that one day on the elevator he’d asked one of the seniors how he was doing. “Not too good,” he said. “I just learned I have a brain tumor.” Morten said that shook him upbecause his father had had a brain tumor. But he was hurrying to work, and he didn’t follow up on it. He suggested that reaching out to the seniors--the homeowner’s association scheduling events with the seniors in mind--could become the unifying force for the condo.
Etta returned to my office, and ordered me to tilt my head back. “Open wider,” she said, releasing one, then two drops of Cyclone Cider on my tongue.
She handed me the bottle. “Keep it. I’ll come for it tomorrow.”
