For Seniors : Palisades Group Documents Unmet Needs

If you want to know what seniors need, just ask them. That’s what a group of concerned Pacific Palisades citizens did last year.

At the urging of Carol Hurley, a business consultant and senior citizen herself, the Pacific Palisades Seniors Survey Committee met for the first time on the day after last year’s Northridge earthquake. It later mailed a survey to all 9,500 Palisades households.

Pacific Palisades, though affluent, is an isolated community without a local medical facility or senior center for older adults. Half of its households are headed by residents over age 55. Those who require services travel to Santa Monica, but must rely on their own transportation.

The committee’s goal was to document the unmet needs of the over-55 group--which accounts for 28% of the total Palisades population of 26,895, according to the 1990 Census. The survey, under the direction of UCLA research associate Dennis McNeilly, also compared results to similar 1993 surveys of Los Angeles and Westside households.

The committee learned that the Palisades area has fewer residents who live alone, less anxiety about crime, fewer households that use public transportation, and more households with incomes of $50,000 and above than other Los Angeles and Westside households.

As for the top five unmet needs, adult education classes, exercise programs, a Neighborhood Watch program, home repair services and an emergency 24-hour medical clinic topped the list.

“I was very surprised,” said Maria Arechaederra, executive director of Santa Monica-based WISE senior services, “because we receive constant calls from Palisades residents asking for (counseling) and in-home services, so I was floored when I saw only 6% to 8% respond needing the kind of intensive care we offer.”

Hurley was also surprised that more adults age 55 and older are interested in expanding their scope of activities than receiving support services. But committee member James Birren, associate director of the UCLA Center on Aging, calls it the dilemma about aging. “We think in two categories--expanders and needers. It’s not a contradiction, it’s just two different areas, and we have to figure out how to facilitate expanders and how to improve the quality of life for needers.”

Miriam Faigin, 65, and her husband have been living in the Palisades since 1968 and want to continue to live in their house as long as they can. But Miriam knows from her experience over the past eight years with her aging father that she doesn’t want to be in a nursing home.

She represents what Carol Hurley considers a typical survey respondent.

“When you still have a parent living, you’re not really the older generation, so I still feel as young as I did 20 years ago,” said Faigin, “I’m not in need of services yet.”

Faigin’s 96-year-old father is in a nursing home in Santa Monica. The Palisades has no board-and-care facility for the frail elderly. Nor does it have a retirement or nursing home. The older population is aging in place. The implication is that once a person becomes too frail, they must not only leave their home but also the community in which they live.

“I don’t think things are going to change in my lifetime,” Faigin said.

Not so, if Hurley has her way.

“Right now the committee and the community is exploring setting up a senior resource center which will coordinate available resources in the area of housing, medical services and adult classes. We’re also looking into a conference center in Temescal Canyon for community use and setting up an (American Asson. of Retired Persons) chapter,” she said.

Looking ahead to 2000, Hurley envisions a 24-hour medical facility for medical testing, affordable taxi service and an adult learning center. But most of all, she says, she hopes to see an organization come forward to care for those without family.

“It’s really about the old values most of us grew up with--looking after each other,” she said.

More than 100 people surveyed offered to become involved in the local look into the future of aging. By 2020, when one-third of the country’s citizens will be seniors, Pacific Palisades may be seen as a model community.

“We’re starting small and seeing what works,” Hurley said.