Thursday, December 15, 2005
Cities in our Northeast Ohio region have been in a fever to attract young people. But the demographic age wave of elderly people in the coming decades may offer different opportunities. The centrifugal force that has spun citizens farther and farther away from central cities may be slowing. And the aging of the population may even reverse it, with retirees moving back to urban areas. WKSU's Mark Urycki reports...
 (Click for larger view.) Cleveland Foundation's Stavy Easterling
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Realplayer / Windows Media / MP3Several years ago the Cleveland Foundation began mulling over what the White House Conference on Aging focused on this week: Baby boomers are about to age into retirement. As part of the Foundation's Successful Aging initiative, they set out to find whether Cuyahoga County is elder friendly. The Foundation's Stacy Easterling says a pilot project called Elder Friendly Communities has been underway all this year.
Right now, many communities have populations of older adults, at 10 percent, 12 percent, which is a national standard right now. But in a few decades, say in the next 10 years, that number's going to go up to near 30 percent. So, the dynamics and the service mix that municipalities will have to deal with is going to be different.
A telephone survey found that local people give the greater Cleveland area a rating of "average" for elder services - a 2.9 out of five. But the Foundation awarded grants to some 19 communities in the region to undergo an extensive self-assessment. Most are partnering, for instance, Hunting Valley, Moreland Hills, Orange Village, Pepper Pike and Woodmere are working together. And then, Brook Park is collaborating with Columbia Township, Middleburg Heights, Olmsted Falls, Berea, and Strongsville. The 64 page survey was put together by the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, led by Paul Alsenas...
Communities that have a lot of seniors, like the first ring suburbs, they are already extremely sensitive and extremely responsive to elder issues, like a Parma Heights or communities like that. But then you have the outlying communities where you do have actually significant numbers of seniors or those about to become seniors and many of those communities don't have a physical environment. They may not have sidewalks or may have very wide streets where elders can't get across an intersection because the signal timing is set to advantage the automobile and not the pedestrian trying to cross the street. Or the street signs themselves. Are they big enough for seniors to see them at night?
Stacey Easterling says they're asking themselves how well suited they are in the areas of mobility, community services, and housing...
Many communities that have people who lived in big mansions where they raise their childrenÉthey may not stay in that home because it's also very expensive and hard to maintain those huge homes but they want to stay in that community and are these municipalities ready to transition that older adult from the huge mansion to the smaller living setting within that same community?
Already there are anecdotal reports from the country of a growing glut of large houses with empty nesters moving back to smaller places, closer to the core cities. Alsenas says developers are beginning to make changes here.
For example, the homes that are built are largely one story homes without stairways. They're built with doorways large enough to accommodate a wheel chair or a walker. A lot of interior design features, as well how the home is laid out on the lot as well as how maintenance is done for the propertyÉthose are being done as entire subdivisions, there are several of those already up and being built and have been built in the area...
Gerontologists worry about the isolation of seniors in far flung areas. Professor Harvey Sterns at the University of Akron recalls how hard it was trying to get care for his elderly parents in rural Maine...
I know many of us love to be out in the country but it is unreasonable if you live at the most distant point possible and then you expect to have door to door service on a regular basis. That's not reasonable. You might be able to get a trip early in the morning or late at night. But we as individuals have the responsibility to give the social service network a fighting chance.
The medical community has similar concerns. Dr. Kyle Allen of Summa Health System
We have different sections, like around Medina and Summit... different counties will experience more disproportional growth of seniors... I think Medina County is really going to do that and so distance becomes an issue for service access, you know. We even see that locally.
It may take a village. Dr William Schwab, head of geriatrics at Ohio Kaiser Permanente...
The senior in trouble can always call 9-1-1 get taken to a hospital. The question is can he get transportation assistance when his son's car doesn't work to get to the doctor before he needs to go to the hospital? If I tell someone to exercise and they're at risk every time they walk out on the street, they can't very well go for a walk. It is going to need to be an active thingÉthat health care is going to be part of a caring system.
Transportation is one of the major concerns. Robert Binstock of the Case School of Medicine notes that Pepper Pike is one of the communities in the pilot assessment...
There is no public transportation in Pepper Pike. There are no corner grocery stores and so on and so forth... and as the people who live there age, and perhaps unable to drive anymore, how do they cope? They've got to move, basically.
The Cuyahoga County planning commission is working on a County-wide transportation plan that might help smaller suburbs. A new model being tried in California is called the transit village - actually a return to an old model, where houses and shops are based around a public transit hub. But the elderly might well move. The Planning Commission's Claire Kilbane thinks, gee; suddenly cities start to look attractive again...
One of the communities I think should look into it, seriously look into it, is the city of Cleveland. There are stories now of the baby boomers who lived in the outlying suburbs while they were raising their kidsÉnow they want to live closer to where things are happening, where the plays are going on. A lot of downtown housing is conducive to that. They're one floor, the transportation system is great.
And housing now targeted to the young could work for their elders. The Cleveland Foundation's Stacy Easterling believes Baby Boomers will be more willing to mix it up, living among young people, and children...
And wouldn't we want a community where you see both the young and the old taking advantage of it. And I was thinking, Cleveland has the potential. I just don't know if we have the structure in place to infuse those older adults in there. University Circle is a great example, because you have Case and you have all of the resources of our cultural institutions there
Boomers are also expected to want more bike and hike trails and parks and they'll likely change the look of Senior Centers - something the foundation's Community Assessment, is looking at...
The offerings right now are cards, bowling and maybe trips to different places. And that's fine. I think though, that boomers are going to want more, and I think that the more might be in ways that one self-actualizes. They might want to take a different mix, they may want yoga, they may want meditation. That has been wildly popular at our lifelong development centers.
Easterling says the survey being filled out by these 19 northeast Ohio communities is not about earning a certain grade but about reaching a certain understanding of their own assets and liabilities. County Planning Director Paul Alsenas says the process has already changed the Planning Commissions outlook...
It began with the premise of the life of a senior to be valued. A valued part of the community and so on. And sometimes it's not just a mindset that helps to address the very practical issues, such as mobility and so on, but it's a broader philosophy and mindset that talks about a sustainable community, a community for life. That's part of the philosophy of these elder assessment projects... designing a community for life. Because as we say, if a community works for its elders, it will work for all parts of the age continuum.
The communities are expected to complete their assessments of whether they are Elder Friendly in January.
Web Resources
Elder Friendly Community project
Aged Population by Community Ohio Aging Demographics - Dept of Aging
Sponsorship for the aging series provided by:
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