City Urged to Boost Services for Elderly

Warning that Los Angeles is ill-prepared for a doubling of senior citizens during the next 20 years, a task force recommended Monday that the city expand housing, transportation and other services for its oldest residents.

The task force, created by the Los Angeles City Council, found that “senior services remain underfunded, fragmented and out of step with rapid changes in the elder population.” It recommended that the city develop a master plan to expand and link programs for the elderly.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Fernando Torres-Gil, an associate dean at UCLA and chairman of the Expert Advisory Task Force on Senior Issues. “We are all getting older and if we don’t get our act together as a city, we will wonder whether we want to be old in Los Angeles.”

The number of city residents 60 and older is expected to double to 1 million within 20 years, taxing services already inadequate to cope with the demand, the task force found.

Los Angeles County has about one-third of the state’s senior citizens but does not receive proportional funding for senior services, said Ann Smith, general manager of the city Department of Aging.

Task force findings and recommendations include:

* Increasing the amount of affordable housing provided by the city and providing more housing money for seniors on federal rent-subsidy waiting lists. About 18,000 subsidized housing units reserved for senior citizens will revert to general use at higher rents in the next decade.

* Encouraging the placement of group homes throughout the city and providing incentives to make them more welcome in residential neighborhoods.

* Providing more funding to retrofit homes with wheelchair ramps and other features that will allow senior citizens to stay in their homes.

* Providing more transportation assistance for seniors.

The task force urged the city to lobby federal and state officials for greater funding for senior programs. But the report does not propose a price tag for what probably will be a multimillion-dollar effort.

“There are programs available for people and they can’t get to them,” said Vice Chairwoman Sandra King, executive director of Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles.

The findings were endorsed by the council’s Arts, Health and Humanities Committee, which asked city managers to report back on implementation cost and timeline.

“There is an unprecedented number of senior citizens that will need specialized services from the city, and we are not ready,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, at whose request the task force was created in 1998. “This report is the first step for the city to move from reactive to proactive on this issue.”