State Aging Hearing on COVID Impacts on Senior Services

New York State Assembly
Standing Committee on Aging
Chair, Assembly Member Ron Kim November 22, 2021

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the impact of COVID-19 on programs and support services for older adults and their caregivers within the state.

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 support, NORCs, and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age.

Background

It is evident that the pandemic itself exposed the limitations to our existing long-term care system — including our overreliance on institutionalization which proved deadly — that must be addressed to better support older adults into the future. Among other challenges, the ability to remain fed, access to community-based supports, and an insufficient technology infrastructure were some of the primary issues facing older adults during the pandemic. Further, efforts to mitigate risk of exposure to COVID-19 had the unintended consequence of exacerbating issues of isolation across our state.

Conversely, the pandemic highlighted the importance of the very community-based services that had long been ignored across our State. As programs such as Senior Centers, Social Adult Day programs, and NORCs were mandated to temporarily shutter in-person operations, dramatic increases in isolation and mental health concerns made clear the meaningful difference each makes in our communities when operating at full capacity.

Finally, data from the CDC found that Black and brown Americans represented 30% of COVID cases, despite accounting for only 13% of the population. Further, black workers made up a significant portion of the frontline workers deemed essential throughout COVID-19, placing these individuals and their families at greater risk throughout the pandemic. Consequently, hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID disproportionately affected people of color all over the country. This data makes clear the existing inequalities across our state that must be confronted in order to create a more equitable system of care.

Recommendations

Today, we have an opportunity to reflect how the pandemic has impacted programs and services geared toward older adults. Through the challenges, we have learned valuable lessons in how to address current problems. In order to tackle these challenges and overcome them in order to create long term solutions, LiveOn NY recommends the following:

Support the Workforce that Supports New Yorkers

Fund Just Pay for human services workers

The work that has been done by Senior Center directors, home-delivered meal cooks, home care workers, and so many other aging services positions unsaid, has been nothing short of heroic during the pandemic. And yet, their pay was rewarded with only a 1% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) last year, the first adjustment in years. To date, the State has mostly deferred the statutory COLA for human services workers, costing workers almost $700 million in increased salaries over the last 12 years. This has resulted in increased staff turnover as underpaid staff leave nonprofits for better paying jobs in other sectors, depriving New Yorkers of services from the most experienced, well-trained staff and jeopardizing high-quality services.

In order to create a long-term system of care that is well staffed to grow to meet the demands of an increasing older adult population, better wages are among the first things that need to be addressed. Therefore, LiveOn NY recommends the State include the statutory COLA for human services providers in the FY23 budget. This COLA is a crucial investment, as human services nonprofits, including the aging services providers that proved so valuable during COVID-19, take on contracts with the State to deliver the most essential services to our communities, and yet these contracts last five or more years with no other mechanism to deal with increasing costs. There is a real opportunity here, by providing this COLA, to invest in a significant workforce made up of 66% women and 68% people of color, doing some of the most important work across our State.

Enact and fund Fair Pay for Home Care, S5374 (May) / A6329 (Gottfried)

This legislation would “establish a base wage for home care workers at 150% of the regional minimum wage,” thereby ensuring the role of home care workers remains competitive, at least in comparison to minimum wage positions. Without such a mandate and corresponding funding from the State government — whose role it is to set wages — wage compression will continue to diminish the viability of this occupation which would exacerbate the existing home care attendant shortage. In practice, this means that, by

State dictated wages continuing to devalue the wages of home care workers, an older adult who has been screened as eligible for home care may find it impossible to find coverage, making it likely that the individual will be forced to move into a nursing home in order to receive care. Only by the State appropriately funding, and thereby respecting, the role of home care workers can it begin to address the resulting home care attendant shortage and in-turn create the community system of care that is preferred by New Yorkers. It’s time for Fair Pay for Home Care.

Invest in the Home-Delivered Meals Program

Across the state, home-delivered meal programs, more commonly known as “Meals on Wheels,” are experiencing extreme challenges recruiting and retaining drivers to complete the State’s more than 2,000 meal routes. The program, which relies on a mixture of volunteers and professional drivers to meet the demand, is confronting both a difficult labor market and a shortage of volunteers. Volunteerism in New York is often executed by older adults, a population that is more reluctant to volunteer opportunities that take place outside of the home as a result of the high risks associated with COVID-19. Further, evidence of the driver shortage for the delivery of meals, the National Transportation Institute anticipates a 5-20% increase in wages for professional driver (referring to the truck drivers) wages through 2022. With these factors in mind, it is time to increase funding for existing Meals on Wheels programs to allow for wage increases.

Invest in the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP)

The LTCOP is an advocate and resource for older adults and persons with disabilities who live in nursing homes, assisted living and other licensed residential facilities. Today ombudspeople help residents understand and exercise their rights to good care in an environment that promotes and protects their dignity and quality of life. The program advocates for residents at both the individual and systems levels to address issues that have the potential to impact their health and wellness. Ombudspeople investigate and resolve complaints; promote the development of resident and family councils; and inform government agencies, providers and the public about issues and concerns that impact facility residents. Ombudsmen’s activities also greatly enhance the footprint of DOH facility surveillance activities by sharing resident concerns and quality of care issues observed during regular interactions with residents.

The importance of this program was seen during the COVID-19 crisis. Throughout this pandemic, the LTCOP staff and volunteers worked to remain engaged with residents,

families, and facilities to provide information and support to ensure that resident rights are protected but, without access, it was hard. Further, unfortunately, continuity of the program amidst COVID-19 has been strained given the significant reliance on volunteers, which, as with the home-delivered meal and other programs, were less available to execute the aims of the program. No longer can we rely on volunteers to execute what should be core, well-paid functions of our community care system. In this vein, it is critical to invest an additional $4.81 million dollars to modernize and further professionalize this program.

Expand Service Capacity to Meet Demand

Fund NYSOFA to address waiting lists for services.

Waiting lists for home care and case management remain a chronic issue in New York City. The existence of waiting lists increases the likelihood of an older adult being institutionalized since waiting lists for services can exist for years. To delay a single older adult from getting such support—particularly during a global pandemic that has left older New Yorkers most vulnerable—is to deny them the opportunity to age with dignity and respect. Given the exorbitant strain COVID-19 has placed on the older adult population, the prospect of adding further stress to the lives of older New Yorkers by forcing them to wait for critical services is untenable and must be addressed through significant and immediate investments.

Additionally, increased investments in addressing waiting lists will inevitably help balance the State’s budget by reducing Medicaid expenditures. Findings indicate that for every 1% increase in home-delivered meal service to the older adult population, there is a significant savings to Medicaid through the reduction of higher-cost care. In particular, findings indicate that in New York, savings from just a 1% increase in meal service would lead to $11,427,143 Medicaid savings—proving that waiting lists for such services are more costly than the cost of the meal service itself. To date, the State has included two funding allocations to address waiting lists ($15 million and $8 million respectively), both allocations should be renewed in the coming fiscal year to continue these critical services. Additional funding to address new waiting lists must also be allocated.

Invest in the Technology Infrastructure of the Aging Services System

COVID-19 has shown the vast digital divide in the older population. The most vulnerable older residents have been without interaction for months, and having the ability to create and implement a robust virtual platform for our clients is paramount. There needs to be a

substantial investment to purchase and implement technology to bridge the gap in social isolation and loneliness. The network of Area Agencies on Aging and subcontracting non-profit providers stand prepared to implement a variety of programs, including expanding virtual senior centers across the state, with a pilot investment of $5 million.

Legislate to Improve Systems

Sign S598B and A3922 into law

S598/A3922 laudably seeks to create a task force to reimagine long term care in New York State. LiveOn NY has long advocated for the emergence of a Task Force to seize the opportunity to emphasize the cost-effective, community-based long term care models that already exist and could be further expanded. For example, one of LiveOn NY’s members, Selfhelp Community Services, have designed the Selfhelp Active Services for Aging Model (SHASAM) which provides a culturally competent social worker in affordable senior housing to serve their diverse residents. This model also provides other supportive services such as benefits and entitlement assistance and health programming. Additionally, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) offer the NORC model which employs social workers, nurses, and in programming to encourage physical activity and combat social isolation. By mobilizing a dedicated Task Force to oversee the growth and expansion of these models and others alike, New York will contribute to the larger cause of enabling older adults to age in place with their care needs addressed. It is critical this legislation be signed into law and operationalized.

Sign S4652 and A6590 into law

S4652/A6590 is an act directing “the commissioner of economic development, in consultation with the commissioner of health, labor and OCFS to study, develop, and implement a long-term strategy to support the growth of the caregiving industry in New York state.” This legislation recognizes long-term care as an area not only of great social need, but one of incredible economic opportunity that has yet to be fully appreciated. To begin to view care work within the context our our State’s larger economic and labor strategy would constitute a significant step forward that could prove to shape better outcomes amidst a future crisis. It is critical this legislation be signed into law and operationalized.

In conclusion, LiveOn NY stands ready to work with the State to continue to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and further determine mechanisms to improve our system of care into the future.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

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Testimony Delivered By: Katelyn Andrews Director of Public Policy
For questions, Contact: kandrews@liveon-ny.org

LiveOn NY Testifies on Home Care and Caregiving Strategy

New York City Council
Committee on Aging, Chair, Council Member Chin
November 19, 2021
Oversight - Home Care and Caregiving Strategy

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

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 support, NORCs, and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age.

Background

Today, we have an opportunity to discuss a key pillar in the continuum of care that enables thousands of older New Yorkers and people with disabilities to age in place: home care. In many ways home care, along with the entire continuum of community-based services, are the critical bulwarks to ensuring individuals can age in communities, rather than in institutional settings, as research has shown to be preferred.

Unfortunately, like much of the network of services that supports an individual's ability to age in place, our home care system relies on a workforce that is both underappreciated and underpaid.  Even further, waiting lists, due to inadequate government investment, limit the reach that our non-Medicaid funded home care program could have for older New Yorkers.

Historically, and even more so during the pandemic, the unmet need for home care for older New Yorkers and people living with disabilities was exacerbated by high turnover and staff shortages due to low wages. Further, COVID-19 disproportionately impacted older adults, and individuals of color, revealing existing inequities and the overburdened state of our long-term care system.

Evidence of the inequitable, underappreciated nature of care work — which is predominantly executed by women and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) individuals — the median annual earnings of New York’s home care workers are only $22,000. In comparison to other industries, the home care industry will require significant resources and investments to ensure all workers receive a livable, competitive wage.

The high rates of turnover in the home care industry can greatly impact the quality of care for older adults and people living with disabilities. A 2019 qualitative study by BMC Health Services found that high turnover rates can be costly and negatively contribute to “both the quality of care for patients and staff- patient relationships.” Along with rapid turnover and low wages, the physical and emotional toll home care workers face creates a challenge to retain and recruit new workers. 

Recommendations

Today, we have the opportunity to address the challenges that arose during the pandemic to provide improved and long-lasting care services for older adults. Many of whom prefer to age in place. It is crucial to stress the importance of improving and expanding our long-term care system in our City. In order to tackle these important issues, LiveOn NY recommends the following:

1. Full funding and an outyear plan to consistently eliminate home care and case management waiting lists. Waiting lists for home care and case management remain a chronic issue in New York City, with waiting lists for services existing for years, despite modest investments. Notably, the two programs are inextricably linked, with a waiting list for one service impacting the accessibility of the other, as case management is first required in order to assess an individual for home care eligibility. Together, these services enable older adults in all five boroughs to age safely and independently in their communities, avoiding unwanted moves to costlier institutional care settings. Further, given the exacerbated strain from the pandemic, the City must address unmet need for critical services with significant long-term investments and solutions. Finally, given the chronic nature of these waiting lists, the City must articulate a five year plan for increased investments based on historical and demographic data that make clear the likelihood of continued growth in demand.

2. The City should advocate to the State to pass and fund Fair Pay for Home Care. The purpose of this legislation is to “establish a base wage for home care workers at 150% of the regional minimum wage,” thereby ensuring the role of home care workers remains competitive, at least in comparison to positions funded at minimum wage. Without such a mandate and corresponding funding from the government, wage compression will continue to diminish the viability of this demanding, highly emotional role, thereby exacerbating the existing home care attendant shortage.

3. $48 Million Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for essential human services workers, including those that execute the DFTA caregiving, case management and home care programs. Throughout COVID-19, human services workers across sectors have stepped up to provide critical services in new ways, including to keep New Yorkers older New Yorkers fed, assist older adults in receiving vaccinations, and combating the life-threatening effects of social isolation. Despite this, the wages of these workers, the majority of whom are women and Black and brown individuals, are slated to remain stagnant in a City where costs are notoriously high.

Legislative Positions

LiveOn NY strongly supports Council Member Chin’s Resolution in support of Senate Bill 598B and Assembly Bill 3922 which seeks to create a task force to reimagine long term care and study the long run impacts of long-term care services in New York State. We join in echoing the Resolution’s call for the Governor to sign this important legislation into law. LiveOn NY has long advocated for the emergence of a Task Force to seize the opportunity to emphasize the cost-effective, community-based long term care models that already exist and could be further expanded. For example, one of LiveOn NY’s members, Selfhelp Community Services, have designed the Selfhelp Active Services for Aging Model (SHASAM) which provides a culturally competent social worker in affordable senior housing to serve their diverse residents. This model also provides other supportive services such as benefits and entitlement assistance and health programming. Additionally, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) offer the NORC model which employs social workers, nurses, and in programming to encourage physical activity and combat social isolation. By mobilizing a dedicated Task Force to oversee the growth and expansion of these models and others alike, New York will contribute to the larger cause of enabling older adults to age in place with their care needs addressed.  

LiveOn NY is actively reviewing Council Member Chin’s Resolution in support of Assembly Bill 3145A and Senate Bill 359, which would require non-sequential split shifts for care workers. Home care workers are essential in assisting older adults with daily responsibilities in their home. Having this service allows older adults to remain in their homes and have extra support. Currently, care workers are entitled “to eight hours of sleep and three hours for meals during a 24-hour shift under the ‘13-hour rule.” This state implemented rule creates significant challenges for both home care agencies and workers alike, as it does not accurately capture the extra hours that may be served should the client need services during the night or at another point in the unpaid working hours. Given this challenge, LiveOn NY looks forward to fully reviewing and determining a position on this potential legislative solution, and all other solutions that may be brought to light, to determine a path forward that ensures full compensation for hours worked across home care workers and full state reimbursement towards such wages.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

LiveOn NY Testifies on Community Care Plan

New York City Council
Committee on Aging, Chair, Council Member Chin
October 18, 2021
Oversight - Community Care Plan

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

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 support, NORCs, and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age.

As the City works to build back a better future for New Yorkers as we all age, the stakes have rarely been higher to ensure older adults have the support they need to safely age in their communities. The Community Care Plan works to recognize these stakes, investing in funding and articulating the incredible increase in demand for services that is likely to be experienced in the coming years. However, implementing a five-year vision amidst a global pandemic in which providers are struggling to stay afloat and which the uncertainties of the new normal loom large has quickly made plain the work still to be done.

Providers have begun receiving award letters for the Older Adult Center (OAC) and Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) Request for Proposal (RFP) and are starting the negotiation process prior to contracts going into place. Unfortunately, initial reports on this process have raised significant concerns on if the investments made in the Care Plan are sufficient to fully fund the number of contracts it seeks to execute. Representative of this, we are hearing of the City urging providers to enter into contracts upwards of a million dollars less than was proposed within the provider’s application. The goal of this is clear, the City continues to ask its most trusted non-profits to do more with less support, even if that means risking forcing non-profits to offer low wages to employees living in the very communities we aim to help.

In response to these challenges and others that we have heard throughout the Community Care Plan’s RFP process, LiveOn NY recommends:

1. The Department for the Aging (DFTA) must extend the timeframe given to RFP award winners to review and enter into a contract. Currently, DFTA is giving providers just and five business days to submit budget documents and scopes of work. This is in response to budgets and units that are vastly different from what was originally proposed. Given that these are documents that will begin to set the terms for the work for years to come, it is in the best interest of both the City and providers that adequate time be given to allow for thorough fiscal, board and programmatic review so that meaningful negotiations and due diligence can occur.

2. The City must retract its position that providers enter a 10% de minimis Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) when finalizing contractual budgets, and instead commit to entering into contracts with each provider’s ICR. The City went through a time intensive process with human services providers to create, and for the first-time fund, a standardized ICR across contracts. The contracting process is the most critical time to fulfill the commitment to this funding, and no provider should face the uncertainty of not having these critical resources built into their program contract.

3. Given the diverging bottom-line budgets between award and proposal, the Department for the Aging must provide further context and justification when responding to award recipients in a way that significantly alters the proposed budgets or units. Throughout the RFP process, providers worked diligently to develop proposals with the appropriate budgets to adequately provide programming to older adults. The budgets offered by the City do not reflect the true cost to sustainably support the model of services proposed by the applicant, with some varying by hundreds and thousands of dollars. Providing clear information regarding the ways in which DFTA found the proposal to be out of line with their budgetary expectations will allow for greater transparency and opportunity for negotiation to ensure that each contract is finalized with realistic unit expectations and corresponding funding.

4. In the November Plan, the de Blasio Administration must fully allocate outyear budget needs to sustain these contracts, for which funds are not currently in place due to an overreliance on stimulus funds. It is bad fiscal policy, particularly on the cusp of a change in administrations, for the City to enter into contracts that will require funding into the outyears, for which the City has not included in its budget projections. Without proper outyear projections, the contracts will face a fiscal cliff in FY23, without funding in place to meet the need. This is particularly concerning given that COLAs and increases in Consumer Price Index are already unaccounted for in the contracts, meaning the funding required to sustain each contract will likely be much greater than currently accounted for.

Beyond the Older Adult Center and NORC RFP, the Community Care Plan articulates growing demand for numerous other services critical to older New Yorkers living in community, including, “case management, home delivered meals, home care, caregiver support,

connectivity needs, transportation and more.”

To truly address these increases in demand, LiveOn NY recommends the following:

1. Invest $16.6 million to serve existing clients within the traditional home-delivered meal program. This investment will allow the Department for the Aging to increase the reimbursement rate to reflect the rising cost of raw food, changes in the labor market, and heightened costs of insurance, gas, and packaging. Despite the lifeline that this program represents, it has been chronically underfunded for years, with funding lagging far behind the national average, putting the program and the non-profits that administer it, financially at-risk year after year. Currently, the reimbursement rate for home-delivered meals is capped at $9.58 cents, an arbitrary rate irreflective of the empirically verified average reimbursement rate for urban areas of $11.78 — as found by Mathematica in 2015. 

2. In addition, the Administration must invest the required funding to the GetFood clients transitioning to the home-delivered meal contracts, at the higher rate. Both this funding and the requested $16.6 million in funding for existing HDM clients should be allocated not only through June 30th of FY22, but in the outyears as well, as it is reality that an individual who is hungry on June 30th, will be hungry on July 1st as well. 

3. Expand investments in case management to ensure all clients can be screened for case management eligibility and receive this critical service should they be eligible. Further, exacerbated by the long-term health impacts of isolation and other stressors experienced over the past year and a half, it is likely that some if not many of the Recovery Meal recipients may require some level of case management to remain independent and safe in their communities. This demand comes on top of consistent increases in demand for case management that have historically led to waiting lists for case managers, requiring additional funding, each year.

Additionally, LiveOn NY strongly supports the following bill that would provide assistance to older adults with bed bugs in their homes:

• Intro 1219, introduced by Council Member Dromm, is an act to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to providing assistance to seniors with bed bugs in their homes. Everyone should be able to safely age in place in their homes without fear of bed bugs infesting their homes. This act will provide older adults living in  low-income housing with the necessary support and services to eradicate bed bug infestations from their homes. In addition, it’s critical that eligible older adults have the resources and information necessary on how to prevent bed bugs in their homes as well as the early warning signs of a potential infestation. While this bill would require the Department for Social Services (DSS) to work in coordination with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department for the Aging, we urge the City to also work with community-based organizations as an additional trusted resource for older New Yorkers.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

LiveOn NY Testifies on NYC Emergency Meal Transition

New York City Council
Committee on Aging, Chair, Council Member Chin
Committee on Economic Development, Chair, Council Member Vallone
September 20, 2021
Oversight - Home Delivered and Emergency Meal Services for Seniors through DFTA’s HDM Program and GetFoodNYC

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

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 support, NORCs, and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity was deeply exacerbated by issues not only economic, but related to access as well, as older adults were advised to “stay home” to mitigate risk of contracting the virus. Senior Centers, which offer nutritious meals to older adults, were forced to close their doors virtually overnight and even today these spaces operate with significant capacity reductions. Recognizing that many individuals relied on Senior Center meals for more than half of their daily nutritional intake, in the Spring of 2020, an emergency home-delivered meal program was instituted, which became known as GetFood. The City’s emergency GetFood program scaled rapidly to meet the growing need for nutritional assistance yet represented a temporary solution to a more systemic hunger problem. 

Today, that very program, GetFood, which laudably worked to keep thousands of New Yorkers fed throughout the pandemic, is poised to come to a close with preparations underway for clients to transition to alternative or existing meal programs by October 15th. For the more than 16,000 older adults still receiving meals through GetFood as of August, the success of this transition will be critical to their ability to remain nourished.

LiveOn NY supports the City’s overarching goal to ensure a seamless transition of clients to existing meal systems without interruption of ensured nourishment. We also recognize that transitioning such a large number of meal recipients from the GetFood program to the traditional home-delivered meal program creates questions of immediate capacity of the current HDM providers. To the extent that capacity to immediately absorb a potential apex of 16,000 clients is unfeasible within a particular catchment area, we recognize that short-term subcontracting of meals might yield the desired continuity of service.

However, it is critical that the City goes beyond ensuring continuity of service through this short-term transition of GetFood contracts, to instead executing long-term investments aimed at rooting out older adult hunger more holistically. Reaching this goal cannot be done without making immediate and significant investments in the non-profit home-delivered meal system that is best positioned to make meaningful strides towards this goal.

To execute this goal, LiveOn NY recommends the following:

1. Within the November plan, the Administration must invest $16.6 million to serve existing clients within the traditional home-delivered meal program. This investment will allow the Department for the Aging to increase the reimbursement rate to reflect the rising cost of raw food, changes in the labor market, and heightened costs of insurance, gas, and packaging. Currently, the reimbursement rate for home-delivered meals is capped at $9.58 cents, an arbitrary rate irreflective of the empirically verified average reimbursement rate for urban areas of $11.78 — as found by Mathematica in 2015. The current rate creates real challenges, leaving barely enough for provider’s to offer delivery drivers minimum wage, competing for the same market as Uber which, according to Glassdoor, pays roughly $48,685 annually for similar work. The effect? Only a quick search on Indeed will bring you 18 ads for delivery drivers within New York City’s home-delivered meal system -- that means many of LiveOn NY’s members are spending time unsuccessfully attempting to hire home-delivered meal drivers due to low wages set by government contracts. Those 18 current vacancies represent 18 meal routes that somehow still need to be staffed, and exist at a time when these contracts are about to absorb upwards of 16,000 additional clients. Quite simply, not investing in this system is a recipe for disaster.

2. In addition, the Administration must invest the required funding to the GetFood clients transitioning to the home-delivered meal contracts, at the higher rate. Both this funding and the requested $16.6 million in funding for existing HDM clients should be allocated not only through June 30th of FY22, but in the outyears as well, as it is reality that an individual who is hungry on June 30th, will be hungry on July 1st as well. 

3. Within the November plan, the Administration must make a $3.6 million capital investment in van purchases by traditional HDM providers contracting with the Department for the Aging. Such an investment would, quite literally, put the wheels in motion towards expanded capacity for this mission driven system to serve GetFood clients that will continue to require meal delivery services long term. Further, such an investment would recognize that the expanded demand for home-delivered meals is unlikely to be a short-term, emergency situation, as demand for home-delivered meals has historically risen year-after-year, a fact mirrored by the rapidly expanding older adult demographic citywide. Appendix A offers cost-estimates supporting this request. 

4. Expand investments in case management to ensure all clients can be screened for case management eligibility and receive this critical service should they be eligible. Further, exacerbated by the long-term health impacts of isolation and other stressors experienced over the past year and a half, it is likely that some if not many of the 16,000 meal recipients may require some level of case management to remain independent and safe in their communities. This demand comes on top of consistent increases in demand for case management that have historically led to waiting lists for case managers, requiring additional funding, each year.

5. Beyond this, the City must begin including COLAs and inflation factors into all City human services contracts. Without this, the wages of workers under these contracts, the majority of whom are women and Black and brown individuals, are slated to remain stagnant in a City where the cost of living is notoriously high. The decision to actively avoid building in the true costs of a core function of City government - ensuring the provision of services for those most in need - creates inaccurate outyear budget projections irreflective of what it will actually take to do business, and all but ensures wage stagnation for this Black and brown workforce. 

To close, I would like to go beyond the statistics and the data to highlight the point of all of this work: the people, each with their own story, family, history, and uniqueness all their own. During the pandemic, we heard from one provider, JASA, about their rushing to deliver an emergency food box to an older client who reached out with only about “two potatoes” left in the house. Similarly gut wrenching, was the story of an older adult who had been surviving on cat food after fear and fatigue left her unable to get groceries; in this instance, our member, Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center stepped in to ensure she had the food she needed. This is the need we are confronting and the constituents who we put at risk when underfunding their very source of respite. 

The recommendations above are not “nice to have” solutions to hypothetical issues, they are the reality of what New York City needs to commit to in order to ensure that no individual opens an empty cupboard in the richest City in the world.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Leading Aging Advocates Present Fresh Agenda for Making New York City a Better Place to Age

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and a historic election, LiveOn NY and Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging present new ideas to help the City’s future leadership seize the opportunity to ensure that New Yorkers of all backgrounds can thrive as they age

August 11, 2021 (New York, NY) – LiveOn NY, a senior advocacy and membership organization, and Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging, released “Aging is Everyone’s Business: Policies for Building a New York for All Ages,” a comprehensive policy agenda that seeks to inspire the City’s incoming elected leaders to make New York a better, more equitable place to age.

The policy agenda provides smart, actionable solutions in nine domains that affect the lives of all New Yorkers: good governance, access to food, housing, technology, financial security, social engagement, human services, healthcare, and infrastructure.

These recommendations are critical in the wake of a pandemic that exposed devastating inequities among New Yorkers of different socioeconomic groups and put older New Yorkers of color at highest risk. LiveOn NY and Brookdale are releasing this vision at a time when New York City is only months away from a major political transition; one that will usher in a new Mayor, a new Comptroller, four out of five new Borough Presidents, and where nearly three out of four City Council members will be new.

With New Yorkers living longer and healthier lives, this agenda envisions a future where everyone has the opportunity to grow old with dignity and confidence. Every recommendation in this agenda considers first and foremost the needs and experiences of the most marginalized older adults, including those who are lower-income, racial minorities, LGBTQIA and gender non-conforming, immigrants, and those who are living with disabilities.

Allison Nickerson, Executive Director of LiveOn NY, said “Our City is approaching a moment where we have the chance to change our course and re-envision how we view aging across the lifespan. This aging agenda offers the City a framework to utilize that ensures all New Yorkers can live in an equitable and just city where we can all confidently age in place.”

Dr. Ruth Finkelstein, the executive director of Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging, said “Disasters reveal all the cracks in our foundation. The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception -- stark inequities were revealed, stemming from systemic racism, ageism, and under-investment in poor communities.  This visionary aging agenda challenges the new administration to address these realities and to make New York a great place for everyone to live and grow old.”

Examples of recommendations offered in the report include:

• Create an emergency food plan to ensure that all older adults have uninterrupted access to food before the next pandemic or natural disaster happens.

• Commit New York City to fighting ageism in all of its forms, along with racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination.

• Build or preserve 1,000 units of affordable senior housing with fully funded services, per year.

• Make basic technology education and training available to every older New Yorker so they are able to meet basic needs online.

• Open public schools after school hours so that community-based organizations can run social programming that brings older adults together.

• Boost the salaries of the nonprofit workers who serve older New Yorkers.

• Expand the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) program to roll back and freeze rents to 30 percent of income for lower-income older New Yorkers and take other big steps towards curbing the homelessness crisis among older adults.

• Invest in programs and training that help older patients access telehealth.

• Expand and increase funding for the MTA’s E-Hail Program, which provides on-demand, door-to-door service for New Yorkers with mobility impairments.

• Prioritize street maintenance that removes hazards to pedestrians.

Read the full report here: https://bit.ly/3CxLeYV

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Press Contact: 

Katelyn Andrews, Director of Public Policy, LiveOn NY kandrews@liveon-ny.org, 609-458-6294

Brianna Paden-Williams, Communications and Policy Associate, bpaden-williams@liveon-ny.org 908-868-7681

Debbie Raskin, Hunter College, draskin@rubenstein.com, 212-843-8028

About LiveOn NY

LiveOn NY is an advocacy and membership organization. Our 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 support, NORCs and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age. Visit us at, www.liveon-ny.org/

Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging

The Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging is CUNY’s aging research and policy center, located at Hunter College. Since 1974, the Brookdale Center has been working to improve the lives of older adults through research, professional development, and advancements in policy and practice. We work to ensure that aging is framed not as a disease, but as another stage in the life course. Visit us at https://brookdale.org/.

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