We’re proud to testify to the New York City Council to ensure that the strengths, as well as the needs, of older adults are consistently heard and prioritized by New York’s elected officials. Below is testimony submitted by LiveOn NY.
To learn more about upcoming New York City Council hearings: click here.
To register to testify: click here.
To watch live and past hearings: view here.
New York City Council
Committee on Finance: Chair, Council Member Chin
Committee on Contracts: Chair, Council Member Kallos
Subcommittee on Capital: Chair, Council Member Gibson
March 3, 2021
Preliminary Budget Hearing - Finance
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Fiscal Year 2022 Preliminary Budget.
LiveOn NY’s members include more than 100 community-based nonprofits that provide core services which allow all New Yorkers to thrive in our communities as we age, including senior centers, home-delivered meals, affordable senior housing, elder abuse prevention, caregiver supports, NORCs and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age.
For decades, LiveOn NY has come to the City prior to budget adoption to highlight the importance of the aging services network, and to share the fact that, despite providers work in communities across our City, the Department for the Aging (DFTA) budget remains at less than ½ of 1% of the overall budget. Even with a growing, increasingly diverse older adult population, this has yet to be redressed. In fact, in recent years, providers have been promised millions of dollars in funding for Senior Centers that never came to be allocated, while also experiencing significant cuts and uncertainty to the much needed Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) initiative.
Amidst this, providers confronted a pandemic that put older adults at the greatest risk, not only to the virus, but also to the negative health impacts of extended periods of isolation while staying home to avoid infection. In response to these threats, providers worked to change their service models virtually overnight, shifting to reaching clients via phone, setting up zoom classes, enrolling clients in new emergency food systems, navigating new vaccine systems, and continuing to be a resource to older adults across the City. This work has been critical, as isolation is now understood to be a significant health risk and predictor of morbidity.
The workers who provided these services - from home-delivered meals, to Senior Centers, to case management - are, and will always remain, essential. It’s time for the City to enact a more equitable budget that holistically supports these professionals that work tirelessly to ensure that no older New Yorker falls through the cracks. Rather than bolstering their work, for too long the City has created cracks in the foundation of nonprofits by eroding the sustainability of their funding, which puts not only these organizations at risk, but our communities and our neighbors.
Given this, the following investments are critical to turning the tide towards a truly equitable City for all ages.
Critical Investments in the Department for the Aging (DFTA) Services
LiveOn NY requests $16.6 million be added to the funding available for home-delivered meals, in order to increase capacity to meet new demand and increase the per-meal rate to the national average. Even following a recent Request for Proposals, the City continues its inadequate reimbursement for culturally competent home-delivered meals. Today, all home-delivered meals remain funded below at roughly $2 less per meal the national average. Further, COVID-19 has demonstrated significant increases to the demand for home-delivered meals, with providers now serving more older adults than ever, with thousands of new clients being added to the service since March.
The City must fully allocate the promised $10 million in funding for Senior Center staff, and $5 million in funding for Senior Center kitchen staff. These funds, which were not included in the Mayor’s preliminary budget, were promised to organizations prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and reneged in the midst of this pandemic, despite older adults being most vulnerable to the virus. Such funding is particularly critical to serve the older immigrant population, as lack of funds can hinder an organization’s ability to hire or retain bilingual staff necessary to best serve LEP older adults. Studies have found that salary increases expected for bilingual professionals ranges from 5-20%, amounts that may be just out of reach within Senior Centers current shoe-string budget. Further, this funding is particularly important to ensure that wages for senior service professionals, a workforce made up of predominantly women and people of color, are paid competitively for their work, rather than exacerbating existing inequalities. Without resolution, the City will continue to underpay this workforce, heightening the risk of more New Yorkers aging into poverty, and of providers of aging services coming to need the very services they now dedicate their lives to making available.
LiveOn NY recommends that the City increase its investment in the technology infrastructure of Senior Center and other DFTA providers. LiveOn NY and our members have seen the ways that lack of access to technology limits the ability for older adults to remain engaged and connected in our communities. For example, lack of access limits one’s ability to connect to virtual programming, heightening the risk of isolation. Further, lack of access means missing out on real time information, such as best practices in regards to COVID, how to access food or the vaccine, and online job opportunities. One of LiveOn NY’s members, PSS, surveyed their more than 700 older adult participants, and found lowest tech use and comfort among their Senior Center program attendees, with many having no personal means to access the internet. Many clients reported having only a basic cell phone as their technology infrastructure. These findings underscore the need to increase technology access funding targeted to the Department for the Aging network.
Continued discretionary and one-time executive funding. Many programs, particularly smaller, hyper-local nonprofits that serve hard-to-reach senior populations rely on discretionary funding to ensure their communities can be served. Therefore, it is critical that all aging services discretionary and one-time Executive funding be restored in the Executive, and subsequent Adopted Fiscal Year 2022 budget.
Critical Investments Across Human Services Contracts
The human services sector stepped up to meet the need of New Yorkers in crisis despite the fact we faced a funding crisis long before our City saw its first case of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the New York City government did not step up to support us in the same way. The City is not getting a deal by chronically underfunding and retroactively cutting human services contracts to balance the budget; it is further harming the low wage workers the City relies on to keep these programs running while pushing community-rooted nonprofits towards failure during a time of increased need. Throughout the last calendar year, the City has allowed the COLA for human services workers to expire in the middle of the pandemic by not renewing it in the FY21 budget, failed to provide comprehensive emergency pay for low-wage City-contracted frontline workers, and created fiscal chaos for the sector by retroactively cutting the Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) Funding Initiative.
In order to address this crisis, the FY22 budget must include the following investments across the human services portfolio, including within Department for the Aging (DFTA) contracts:
Sufficient funding to fully honor the ICR Funding Initiative for FY20, FY21, and going forward. Recent cuts to the ICR Initiative have significantly threatened the viability of New York City’s nonprofit human service providers, leaving current senior service providers scrambling to pay staff and get by. To truly support nonprofits through COVID-19 and beyond, the City must reverse course and fully implement the ICR Initiative, including full funding of ICRs within HDM contracts, and all DFTA and human services contracts;
The restoration of the COLA on the personnel services line of all human services contracts at a rate of at least 3%; and
Comprehensive emergency pay for human services workers retroactive to March 23, 2020, when non-essential workers in New York were ordered to stay home.
These urgent investments are needed while workers, advocates, providers, and elected officials continue to work together on more comprehensive solutions to ensure that human services workers finally earn fair pay for their essential labor.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and for all support of the investments outlined in the above. We look forward to continuing to share information on the need for broader support of aging and human services, and hope to find resolution to these budgetary shortfalls in the Fiscal Year 2022 budget.