Affordable Housing Shortages

Brenda Clement is Executive Director of Citizens Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA), a nonprofit association for community development and affordable housing in Boston, Mass. CHAPA’s mission is to encourage the production and preservation of housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income families and individuals and to foster diverse and sustainable communities through planning and community development. In 2014 Brenda Clement was elected Chair of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). Founded 40 years ago, the NLIHC is a national nonprofit research and advocacy organization based in Washington D.C. NLIHC works on a broad range of housing policy issues that affect low-income people and publishes research and analysis to illuminate America's affordable housing shortage.

"The gap between housing costs and what people can afford continues to grow," Clement says. "And for folks who are older, that gap has grown even more. It’s estimated that over half of senior renters and owners pay more than half of their income for housing. If you pay than 30% of your income, your housing cost is considered unaffordable. … So we know that we need to continue create housing options and to build and development housing units that would be affordable for folks who are on a fixed income."

"The publication of Laudato Sii (Praised Be), the encyclical of Pope Francis on the environment was and continues to be a major event in the religious communities around the world. Francis became the first pope to engage not only Christians and 'people of goodwill,' but also 'every person living on this planet,'" says Rabbi Lawrence Troster of Kesher Israel Congregation in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

"The religious environmental movement which has existed for over 25 years has now been reinvigorated and there are new efforts in the U.S. and around the world to unite to deal with the environmental crisis from a faith perspective. As a Jewish eco-theologian and environmental activist for over 30 years, I am seeing new interest from the grass roots to the national and international level to understand the environmental crisis as primarily a moral crisis. I also find many parallels between Pope Francis and the Jewish tradition on how to respond."

"Have you ever experienced a time when you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from, or when you didn’t have food in your cabinets or in your refrigerator? That’s food insecurity," says Glenn Bergman, Executive Director of Philabundance (https://www.philabundance.org/). "Thirty percent of the people we serve who experience food insecurity are children and 15 percent in this area are seniors. There are many seniors who don’t receive enough benefits and the cost of living is too high for them, so they have to cut back on many things, including food."

"The issue has to do with the fact that wages have not kept up with the cost of living a decent life. About 60 percent of the people we serve are the working poor. They have jobs. But in the Philadelphia area, one in four people are hungry. And in the United States, one in seven people are hungry at some point each year," Bergman says. Philabundance is a nonprofit that "rescues food from the back of grocery stores, from the Port [of Philadelphia] and from farms, and then we move that food to people in need in the Delaware Valley and in New Jersey. … We’re the region’s largest hunger relief organization. We serve nine counties—five in Pennsylvania and four in New Jersey."

Boomer Involvement in the Great Environmental Debate

“The environmental issue is the moral issue of our time. It is the issue that touches on all areas. It is an issue of justice," says Rabbi Mordechai Liebling. “Environmental justice has to do with the fact that poor people and people of color are disproportionately affected by environmental disasters. We need to change the paradigm of our society from individualism, independence and atomization to a paradigm of interconnection, cooperating and seeing whole systems. The old paradigm has brought us a fossil fuel economy which is destroying the environment."

Mordechai Liebling is Director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. Liebling was a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations for 12 years. He has served on the boards of various national and international nonprofit organizations; currently he serves on the boards of the Faith and Politics Institute and Rabbis for Human Rights—North America. Liebling also is the president emeritus of the Shalom Center. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from Cornell University and Master of Arts in the history of American civilization, specializing in American progressive movements, from Brandeis University. Liebling is a 1985 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Dispelling Myths About Arthritis

"Today there are probably 52 million people in the United States who have some form of arthritis. That’s one in five people. It’s important to know that two-thirds of these people are under 65 years of age, and 300,000 of them are kids," says Sharon Jaycox Daitz, Regional Vice President of Programs with the Arthritis Foundation. "Arthritis is all about joints and inflammation. There are over 100 types of arthritis. The types that most people know from their grandma and grandpa is osteoarthritis. The other more common kind is rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune condition. And there’s gout and psoriatic arthritis and the list goes on."

(http://www.kendal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/BoomerGenerationRadioKendalGraphic-1024x1024.jpg)

Elders as Surrogate Grandparents for Foster Children featured on Feb. 16 edition of Boomer Generation Radio

Bridge Meadows (http://www.bridgemeadows.org/), a three-generation housing community in Portland, Oregon, provides a unique and innovative solution to the current foster care crisis. The community includes homes for adoptive families and apartments for elders 55 and older. Elders at Bridge Meadows act as surrogate grandparents and mentors to the children and families who live there. The elders volunteer an average of eight hours per week, teaching arts and crafts, giving music lessons and taking the kids to the park during the summer.

Derenda Schubert, Ph.D., is Executive Director of Bridge Meadows and a psychologist. She has professional experience counseling children and families, as well as creating and managing programs in the realms of foster care, mental health and developmental disabilities. Prior to joining the Bridge Meadows team, she was the Chief Operating Officer of Trillium Family Services and a Board Member of Bridge Meadows.

Renee Moseley, LCSW, is Associate Director of Bridge Meadows. She obtained her MSW from UCLA in 1993, specializing in child welfare. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she has provided mental health services, workshops and program management to county- and community-based agencies focused on child abuse and neglect. Renee says she enjoys blending her passions for social service and entrepreneurship in her work at Bridge Meadows.

(http://www.kendal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/BoomerGenerationRadioKendalGraphic-1024x1024.jpg)

Why Some Older Adults Are Susceptible to Being Scammed discussed on Feb. 9 edition of Boomer Generation Radio

"As the population ages, there are certain reasons to be a little more careful about knowing how decisions are made and whether they are influenced by either by psychological vulnerability or neuro-cognitive variables [like] loss of memory and problem-solving skills," says Peter A. Lichtenberg, Ph.D., Director of both the Institute of Gerontology and the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute and the Founding Director of the Wayne State University Lifespan Alliance. "We have found that people who were both financially and psychologically vulnerable were much more likely to be scammed."

Professor Lichtenberg is a national expert in financial capacity assessment and financial exploitation of older adults. He has published articles on psychological vulnerability and fraud and on his new instrument the Lichtenberg Financial Decision Making Rating Scale. His particular areas of research include mental health in long term care, geriatric depression, geriatric psychology and medical rehabilitation and the early detection and management of Alzheimer's Disease. Emerging research includes financial decision making, perceived cognitive impairment,  victims of fraud and kinship care.