|
Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, South Jersey
Commentary, January 5, 2002 Facilities disregard the poorer retirees With "affordable" assisted-living facilities springing up all over the place, my question is: Affordable for whom? As a still ambulatory retiree, I recently attended one of those complimentary lunches that assisted-living facilities offer every so often as a means of tapping into the lucrative senior market. I wanted to see what the facilities were all about. I found out. They're about money. Unless you are prepared to pay $50,000 to more than $100,000 up front, and then can afford a monthly rent of $1,500 to more than $2,000, forget it. Affordable for the affluent, yes. But for those seniors living below the poverty level, or even the ones who formerly thought of themselves as middle class, it is a fantasy. Older citizens, more susceptible to illness, saddled with expensive prescription medicines, needing medical care not covered by insurance, and faced with an ever-increasing cost of living, are left to flounder on their own or endure the embarrassment of depending on their children. With millions of dollars being spent on assisted-living facilities geared toward retirees who already are financially able to live wherever they wish, poorer seniors are left out in the cold. True, some apartment buildings for seniors are open to "low-income" residents, but not nearly enough. You could be on a waiting list for up to six years. How is the plea for more affordable housing for seniors being answered? By constructing additional assisted-living facilities, including a planned $50 million project on the grounds of the golf range across from the Ritz 16 theater on Haddonfield-Berlin Road in Voorhees. It will no doubt be a spectacular showpiece, and will be touted as one of the finest facilities of its kind in the nation. Very impressive. But what will it do for the poor, to whom the facility's parent organization, the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey, had originally dedicated its time and resources? Absolutely nothing. That doesn't mean the less-advantaged have a right to the same accommodations as people who can pay more. The affluent worked for their wealth and can use it as they please. But the poor work hard, too. They may not possess the business acumen to acquire a large nest egg, but should they suffer for not being born with the knack for making money? The elderly poor should have something to look forward to other than a Social Security check. After a lifetime of working, raising children, dealing with life's obstacles, and in many cases fighting for their country, they deserve the same consideration as the well-to-do. Our society's priorities are twisted out of shape. It just doesn't make sense, this "necessity" to build exorbitant retirement communities for those who least need help finding housing. Some might say this appeal on behalf of less-fortunate citizens has a touch of socialism about it. But why attach a political label to it? Call it what it really is - taking care of our own. Who's going to pay for all this affordable housing? I don't know. I'm neither a politician nor an economist. What I do know is that there's nothing the people of the United States and our government cannot do if we put our minds to it. We can focus our peacetime energies just as we have done for war. I like to think back to World War II, when President Franklin Roosevelt was called crazy for asking the country to produce 50,000 planes in a single year. It can't be done, his critics railed. We not only did it, but we exceeded it. Sure, it cost money, but our survival was at stake. So is the survival of millions of poor who are engaged in a war of their own, struggling to make their "golden years" more of a sparkling reality, not a tarnished dream. Since World War II, we've witnessed a technological revolution. We've put men on the moon, made computers a household word, filled the skies with satellites, and shrunk the world through instantaneous communication. With the Hubble Space Telescope, we have gazed almost to the visible limits of our universe. Yet, at the same time, we too often overlook the plight of our neighbors in need. Will we triumph in space only to lose the battle here on Earth? Sidney B. Kurtz is the author of a family memoir, The Jewish Rectangle: An American Adventure. He lives in Pennsauken. |