More Senior Aid Urged as Numbers Rise

Warning that Los Angeles is ill-prepared for a doubling of the senior citizen population during the next 20 years, a task force recommended Monday that the city expand housing, transportation and other services provided to 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,” and recommended that the city develop a master plan to expand and link programs serving older residents.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Fernando Torres-Gil, an associate dean at UCLA and chair 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. We want the mayor and council to put this at the top of their agenda.”

The number of Los Angeles residents 60 and older is expected to double to 1 million by 2020, taxing a network of services already inadequate to deal with the demand for help, the task force found.

Findings and recommendations included:

* Spend more to provide housing for senior citizens on waiting lists for federal rent subsidies, and take steps to increase affordable housing provided in the city. About 18,000 subsidized housing units reserved for senior citizens will revert to use by the general public at higher rents in the next decade.

* Encourage the placement of group homes throughout the city, and provide incentives to make them more acceptable in residential neighborhoods.

* Provide more funding for existing programs to retrofit homes with wheelchair ramps and other features that would allow senior citizens to stay in their homes and avoid moving to special-care facilities.

* Provide more transportation assistance.

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

The task force also urged the city to lobby federal and state officials for greater funding for senior programs.

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

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The report does not provide a price tag for what will probably be a multimillion-dollar effort.

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

The task force was created in 1998 at the request of City Councilwoman Laura Chick.

“There is an unprecedented number of senior citizens that will need specialized services from the city, and we are not ready,” Chick said. “This report is the first step for the city to move from reactive to proactive on this issue.”