icon Blueprint for February

Solutions

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3 min read

In the time it takes to read this sentence you will age. Sorry to have to report that. But it’s true.

Aging is one of the few things (along with eating, sleeping and watching the Super Bowl) that everyone we know does. It’s a big issue. And it requires a lot of solutions.

The office that houses us at Tax Credit Advisor, as well as the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association is also the home of the National Aging in Place Council. This provides us with direct access to many people who are struggling with the issues of aging. So we began our planning for this issue of the magazine by listing the problems we hear most frequently in our conversations with the elderly: affordability of housing, access to healthcare and other services, fear of loneliness as they lose friends and family, the need to feel part of a community, maintaining a sense of purpose in life. And then we sent out our writing team to find living situations that specifically address these issues. What is most gratifying—and also a compliment to our industry—is that we found models for creative solutions to each of these issues, and all of them made possible only because of the tax credit finance program.

In the following pages, you will find the affordability of providing assisted living and its necessary services discussed in an industry survey piece by staff writer Mark Olshaker (Financing Assistance), and actions needed to make it more affordable in this month’s The Guru is In column by David A. Smith.

Mark, who in a previous issue looked at access to healthcare and other services provided by the Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly in Boston, this time talks with Geoff Brown of USA Properties and Beth Southorn of LifeSTEPS, both in Sacramento, who work closely together to provide residents what they need. (A Model Partnership)

Avoiding loneliness by participating in a community is the focus of both Joel L. Swerdlow’s look at the senior arts colonies built by Meta Housing (Creativity as a Tonic) and Bendix Anderson’s study of the housing developed by Broadway’s Actors Fund, which, among other things, brings people who have shared a work history together after their careers have ended. (Aging with Colleagues)

And using housing to maintain a sense of purpose is illustrated by Joel’s visit to Genesis, a new building in Washington under the auspices of Generation of Hope and Mi Casa, designed specifically to encourage intergenerational living and interaction. (Intentional Neighboring)

What I hope you will take away from this issue is that tax credits do not just build walls, they sustain lives.

Marty Bell, Editor