http://www.fastcoexist.com

July 10, 2013

From http://www.fastcoexist.com:

There’s a new twist to aging in place. It’s aging in an interesting urban place.
It’s the idea that the city you live in or near–with all its buzz and diversity–just might be an ideal place to come of age as a senior citizen with equal amounts of grace and gusto.

Although there is no data that captures the number or growth of alternative senior housing located in the fast-pumping hearts of cities around the globe, there’s evidence of a stir. A smattering of highly specialized, highly provocative ways of living (including in Chicago what will be the Midwest’s first affordable senior housing that openly welcomes people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) have started to pop up in very urban settings, targeted to the engaged senior for whom a retirement village set apart from the rest of the community simply doesn’t work.

As a whole, these citified developments are as diverse as the urban fabric itself and cover a range of living arrangements–from senior apartments to independent living and continuing care retirement communities. All of them, though, share the belief that communal living mixed with the energy of the city is a prescription for the loneliness, isolation, and focus on medical status that other elder communities offer.

In Montreuil, on the east side of Paris, there’s the Babayagas’ House for feminists of a certain age who manage the place as well. In Los Angeles, the Dana Strand Senior Apartments is an urban infill development (where land in a dense area is re-developed for housing) that gives low-income seniors affordable rental apartments and the ability to stay in their neighborhood in a LEED gold sustainable complex, no less. In Chicago, The Clare and The Hallmark are high-class high rises planted in tony neighborhoods that give moneyed seniors deluxe accommodations and easy access to the cultural attractions of the city (kind of like a vertical cruise ship).

But one of the most interesting projects breaking ground right now is also one of the most alternative in every sense of the term and a totem for this whole idea that cities and innovative senior housing go together.

It’s called Town Hall. It’s meant to serve–in an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere–anyone who is over 55 and low income. And not coincidentally, it’s located in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood (a.k.a. Boystown), the heart of the city’s gay community. And it sits adjacent to the Center on Halsted (COH), a vibrant and comprehensive community center for the LGBTQ community that opened in 2007 and sees 1,000 people walk through its doors every day.

When it’s completed in fall 2014, the six-story apartment complex will offer 79 units (49 one bedrooms; 30 studios) and be the next logical step in supporting Chicago and the Midwest’s LGBTQ community. (Triangle Square in Hollywood is the country’s first and, to-date, only completed housing development meant for low-income LGBTQ seniors.)

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DNAinfo Chicago

June 7, 2013

From DNAinfo Chicago:

HUMBOLDT PARK — In a deal put before the City Council this week, 11 city-owned lots on the southern end of Humboldt Park are on their way to becoming veggie-laden urban farms bearing fresh produce for needy residents.

The proposal would see the lots — in the 400 block of North Kedzie, Albany and Whipple Avenues — sold to NeighborSpace for $1 a piece to be converted into a 2.6 acres of urban farmland.

Though the land will go to NeighborSpace, a nonprofit that works to provide and sustain urban gardening plots, Heartland Human Care Services will manage the land and distribute the produce to local food pantries.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am to get this going,” said Dave Snyder, program manager for the project, dubbed Chicago Farmworks. “I think it’s just going to be an absolutely, incredibly exciting project.”

Chicago Farmworks has already gotten started on a plot in the 400 block of North Kedzie, which straddles the communities it will serve, Humboldt Park and East Garfield Park.

“The city’s committed, we’re committed, NeighborSpace is committed, so we’ve already developed the first phase of the space, which is about half an acre,” Snyder said.

The group has planted zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cabbage, and onions to start, creating a true urban farm that can be seen next to the Metra tracks just off Fulton Street and Kedzie Avenue.

The produce will go to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which distributes food throughout Cook County.

“So this way we’re going to get high-quality, local, responsibly-grown produce to low-income residents,” Snyder said.

The proposal has yet to go to a City Council vote but, in the meantime, Snyder said Heartland will use the Kedzie plot as a practice model for the rest of the lots.

“There’s so much promise in the site right now,” he said. “The city’s willing to play ball and so are nonprofits like Heartland.”

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WBEZ Chicago

June 3, 2013

From WBEZ Chicago:

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ChicagoPride.com

June 3, 2013

From ChicagoPride.com:

Chicago, IL — Heartland Housing and Center on Halsted today joined with Lake View residents and elected officials to break ground on the region’s first LGBT-friendly affordable senior housing development.

“Seniors should not have to give up their friends and way of life because they’ve been priced out of the neighborhood,” said Michael Goldberg, Executive Director of Heartland Housing. “Our city is stronger when everyone has a safe place to call home, regardless of their age or income level.”

The 79-unit, $26 million development will preserve a portion of the historic 23rd district Town Hall police station while creating a new building with residential and commercial space. The units will be available to any senior in need of affordable housing, regardless of their sexual orientation.

“Lakeview has a proud history of breaking down barriers of prejudice and building up understanding and compassion. Today we continue that commitment to create a community where everyone is welcome, safe, and valued,” said Modesto “Tico” Valle, CEO of Center on Halsted.

The early-morning groundbreaking event also served as an informal kick off to Gay Pride Month.

Read more on Lakeview Patch

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WGNTV

June 2, 2013

From WGNTV:

The bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois is now delayed until the Fall at the earliest.

The Spring legislative session ended last Friday and a vote on the measure did not happen.

In the city’s Lakeview Community supporters used the groundbreaking of a new LGBTQ-Friendly Senior Housing Development to continue their push for equality.

A crowd cheered as a bulldozer began tearing down a vacant police station to make room for the new Heartland Housing and Center on North Halsted near Addison.

The center will be one of the first in the nation meeting the needs of the LGBTQ community.

“The fact that government recognizes that LGBT issues and seniors living in the community, staying in the community, less isolation, more integrated, I’m just ecstatic,” said 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney.

Breaking ground on the Heartland Housing and Center is significant for the community since legislators in Springfield failed to pass a same-sex marriage bill last week.

Some opponents of the bill come from black churches who say politicians had better think twice before voting in favor of the bill.

“In our community nobody gets in public office without the church and nobody remains without the church,” said Bishop Larry Trotter.  “I think that most of those legislators have come to grips with the fact we represent the people back home, and the people back home are against this bill.”

“Last week in Springfield was a disappointment,” said Heartland Alliance President Sid Mohn,  “today is an encouragement to say that things can be done that prove this state and this city are inclusive of the rights and the needs of its LGBT residents.”

The project is expected to be completed next Spring.

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WBEZ Chicago

May 31, 2013

An historic hotel with a squalid past is transformed into a model of green, affordable housing

From WBEZ Chicago:

The Viceroy Hotel had its problems long before the alderman was robbed.

Built in 1929, the hotel originally catered to middle class professionals who couldn’t afford their own two-flat. It was built in the dense, up-and-coming near West Side, with 175 tiny rooms and a view of Union Park. It was a beautiful example of Chicago’s many Art Deco terracotta buildings. A Chicago Daily Tribune editorial from the year it was erected praised the new building, saying the hotel would “add a dash of color to a district. . . daubed with grime put on by Old Father Time.”

But like the surrounding neighborhood the Viceroy fell on hard, then harder, times. You’d never recognize the building praised by the papers if you had seen the hotel just a few years ago.

“My house got robbed several Christmases ago, and the police came and they didn’t find anything,” Alderman Walter Burnett (27th) recalled. “Then somebody recognized the person who robbed my home. I jumped in the car, and I chased him right to the Viceroy Hotel.” 

There, he saw some of the hotel’s down-and-out residents.

“There was a young lady who was on drugs, and there was a man who was pimping her,” the alderman said. “That was the type of characteristic of people who were in the Viceroy.”

In 2002, a young reporter named Mandy Burrell tried to spend the night at the Viceroy for a story. She was offered crack before she even walked in the door and could not bring herself to touch the furniture in her $38 room.

After looking at the stained and soiled comforter tattered by cigarette burns and other unidentifiable transgressions, [I’d decided] that we would not be lying or sitting on the bed that night. In fact, it didn’t seem wholesome to touch anything in the room. From the faded, pulled-up mess of a carpet to the showerless bathroom, with its filthy bathtub and mildewed grout, it seemed impossible that the room would pass muster on any state health inspection. Even the wood paneling on the TV set was gashed and burned by god knows what. And there was no way I’d ever use the threadbare towel or two Styrofoam cups resting upside down on the dresser.

Burrell barely made it past midnight. Later she called the Viceroy “the most depressing place I’d ever been,” although she admitted the real takeaway from her reporting was the stark contrast between her own privileged upbringing and that of the poverty-stricken tenants she encountered that night.

The Viceroy went out of business not too long after after that. Writing for WBEZ in 2011, Micah Maidenberg described the metal guards strapped across the windows of the vacant building.

But the Viceroy Hotel has gone through a second transformation: it’s no longer a shady SRO, but rather, a model of affordable housing.

Now called Harvest Commons, the old hotel was recently rehabbed by a coalition of community developers and neighborhood groups, including Heartland Housing and the nearby First Baptist Congregational Church.

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Washington Post

May 23, 2013

From Washington Post:

“I eat on one side. I can’t chew, you know, because the teeth are very weak.”

I’ve researched various issues at the boundaries of public health and poverty policy. One basic issue seems to always lurk: bad teeth. I can’t count the times this health problem has come  up when I’ve talked with a homeless person, someone with a mental health or substance use disorder, or someone who is simply quite poor. When I meet people who have gotten past a bad patch in their lives, their dental problems — including missing teeth or yellowed gums — still need treatment, stigmatizing reminders of what these people otherwise had left behind.

The populations most affected by dental health issues are sadly familiar. According to the Florida Dental Care Study, “African Americans and persons of lower [socioeconomic status] reported more new dental symptoms, but were less likely to obtain dental care. When they did receive care, they were more likely to experience tooth loss and less likely to report that dentists had discussed alternative treatments with them.”

Let’s put it simply: Over a four year period, respondents with incomes below the poverty line lost three times as many teeth as those with higher incomes.

Access problems have worsened during the great recession, as states and localities curtail Medicaid and non-Medicaid oral health services. Here in Illinois, Medicaid for adults doesn’t cover regular cleanings, and no longer covers routine care such as dental X-rays, filling of cavities, or root canal surgery. You can get an emergency tooth extraction; that’s about it. California and many other states enacted similar policies. State cuts in the adult Medicaid program have put severe pressure on federally funded health centers and dental education institutions; they can no longer afford to provide previous level of care and cross-subsidized services to uninsured adults.

You might wonder what you would do if you were uninsured or on Medicaid and you woke up with a piercing toothache. I wondered that, too. So I called Dr. Mona Van Kanegan, a public health dentist who provides safety-net care at Chicago’s Heartland Alliance. Her answer wasn’t reassuring:

Most people with a dental emergency live with the pain for months or even years. Some self-medicate, and when they can’t bear it any longer, they go to the ER.  Most ERs do not have the ability to provide definitive oral health treatments, and the best that they can do is provide pain medication and antibiotics.  The person may also be given a phone number of a community clinic where they can receive further care.  If the person cannot find affordable care in their community, they may repeat the ER cycle again and again.

Unfortunately, these glaring issues went virtually unaddressed in the health reform measure. Pediatric dental services are covered in Medicaid. They are also essential health benefits within the new health insurance exchanges. The Affordable Care Act also provided resources for Federally Qualified Health Centers. That was helpful. Yet adult dental care was otherwise barely mentioned in ACA.

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WBEZ Curious City

May 22, 2013

A listener who hustles to make ends meet wants us to consider people who hustle for even less.

From WBEZ Curious City:

Listener Maggie Cassidy recently got a master’s degree in urban planning. She hasn’t found a job in her field yet, so she’s now working for about $10 an hour at two different part-time jobs. She said her own hustle has made her think seriously about people who hustle for even less. Little wonder, then, that she asked Curious City:

What is it like to live on a minimum-wage job in Chicago?

And Maggie got even more specific. She wanted to know who lives on Illinois’ state minimum wage of $8.25 an hour, and why.

“What is it like for people for whom this is their only option?” Maggie asked.

Well, it’s an opportune time for this question, because low-wage work is increasingly common in the Chicago area and nationwide. Since the 2008 recession, the majority of job growth has been in lower-wage positions, while middle class jobs have bounced back more slowly.

Recent debates at the national, state and local level about what the minimum wage should be, and whether raising that minimum wage is bad or good for business, have brought the issue to the forefront. Here I’m going to focus on Maggie’s very personal question: What is it like to live here in Chicago on minimum wage, and who does it?

Someone who’s been waiting for us to ask

Krystal Maxie-Collins was 28 years old when I interviewed her for this story. Her last birthday (May 23), didn’t go as planned.

“Last year sucked,” said Maxie-Collins. She’s worked at Macy’s downtown for two years at minimum wage, with commissions on top of that. She has another part-time minimum wage job conducting phone interviews for a research center. Last May 23 she was expecting a decent deposit — nearly $500 — to drop into her account in the early evening.

She planned to do something fun, maybe get her hair done or go out. “My check did not hit until 11:53 that night,” she said. “I’m like, it’s my birthday and all I did was sit around the house waiting on my money to hit my account.”

Maxie-Collins has four children (the oldest is nine, the youngest is three), a fiance who also works a minimum wage job downtown, and very little free time.

“I have been waiting for someone to ask me about how my day goes,” said Maxie-Collins, settling into a soft gray chair in her West Englewood home.

A typical day for Maxie-Collins starts around 6 a.m. She gets dressed, makes breakfast, gets her kids ready for the day and flies out the door to a bus to get downtown. Selling shoes at Macy’s is a grind: She has to meet daily sales quotas in order to qualify for commissions. She takes few breaks, she says. After Macy’s, Maxie-Collins often hurries to her other job, where she sometimes stays until ten at night. She attends jobs several days a week, but her schedule varies.

Her brother-in-law cares for the kids while their parents are at work, and her two older children are with their father in Indiana for the year because Maxie-Collins didn’t want them to be in Chicago Public Schools, at least not while some schools are threatened with closure.

Despite constantly working, Maxie-Collins says she’s barely surviving.

“At the end of the week, I still don’t have enough money to put food on the table or clothes on my kids’ back, buy them shoes or school supplies,” she said. She buys a weekly CTA pass because she never has enough on hand for the month, and she and her fiance barely cover the household bills.

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Windy City Times

May 22, 2013

From Windy City Times:

The City of Chicago, the Center on Halsted and Heartland Housing are about to break ground on the Midwest’s first LGBT-friendly affordable senior housing facility.

Center on Halsted CEO Modesto Tico Valle said a ground-breaking ceremony will be held toward the end of the month to start construction on the 79-unit facility, which will be built just north of northwest corner of Halsted and Addison streets and include the historic 23rd District Town Hall police station.

The Chicago City Council approved the land transfer on Mar. 13, in addition to several sources of city funding including up to $5 million in HOME dollars, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credits. The deal was finalized and closed in mid-April.

“The city and everyone we’ve worked with have been very excited that this is another step in the right direction, that a leading city is going to be creating affirming, affordable housing and that speaks loudly,” Valle said.

The project has come along as conceived, according Nadia Underhill, associate director of real estate development at Heartland Housing, especially considering the complications that arose from adaptive reuse regarding the historic police station. The project will preserve the station’s exterior along with certain interior details, she said.

One of the major changes to the plan came from planning charrettes, or focus groups, with seniors, many of whom are involved with Center on Halsted’s SAGE programming. After listening to seniors’ needs and desires, Heartland made changes to the unit layouts to make them as flexible as possible and also made more space for larger social gatherings.

“We were having discussions about people’s lives and the lives they envisioned for people who might live in the building,” Underhill said. “The importance of friend networks and the role that socializing and gathering has played for people became very clear.”

One of the way Heartland will meet that need is by creating a shared dining room space for residents to host gatherings of 8-10 people.

“We hope (the dining room space) will give people who are dependent and connected to friends and family networks a space to continue having those interactions in their new housing,” Underhill said.

Valle added that many of the seniors he has heard from expressed an interest in a community space to be closer to friends. He said a group of seniors who were regulars at Bucks Saloon in Boystown, for example, approached him right after the LGBT-friendly bar closed last month wanting to know how they could get on a list.

“If anything, we’ve been able to put the spotlight on aging and people are thinking about that and thinking about how will they age in community, that they don’t have to age alone,” Valle said.

Construction will last about 16 months, Underhill said, and Heartland will begin accepting housing applications sometime next spring. Both Heartland and Center on Halsted expect a large amount of interest from hopeful residents, and stress that while the facility will be LGBT-friendly, they cannot discriminate in leasing.

“Hopefully, people will self-select themselves out of the project if they are not our allies,” Valle said.

During construction, Valle said the Center hopes to offer hardhat tours of the new building as well as provide some fundraising opportunities that will allow for some creative partnering.

Meanwhile, the success of this project to date has already made waves in the Chicago area. Valle said that Center on Halsted was awarded a request for proposal to help create another LGBT-affirming senior housing project in the Western suburb of Berwyn.

For future updates on the project, Center on Halsted plans to keep people informed via social media and its new magazine/newsletter The Ville.

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Chicago Tribune

May 21, 2013

‘The landscape of poverty in America has changed’

From Chicago Tribune:

Once considered the definition of the middle-class American dream, the suburbs are now home to a larger, faster-growing poor population than urban areas, according to a new analysis.

During the 2000s, the number of poor living in U.S. suburbs grew by 64 percent — more than twice the 29 percent growth rate in cities.

Overall, 16.4 million poor people consider suburbia home, compared with 13.4 million in big cities and 7.3 million in rural areas, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published Monday.

The shifting poverty demographic can be seen in Chicago’s suburbs, where the number of poor increased by 99 percent in the last decade — from 363,966 to 724,233, said Elizabeth Kneebone, co-author of “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.”

That was a greater increase than recorded in the New York City or Los Angeles regions, according to the book.

The authors and local advocates contend that the new reality will require fresh approaches to policies and practices to avoid a grim future.

“Clearly, the landscape of poverty in America has changed,” Kneebone said. “It can’t just be about shifting resources from one place to another. We have to think about how to work more effectively across city and suburban lines.”

Kneebone and co-author Alan Berube define poor as a family of four living on $22,314 or less. Their book listed several factors driving the nationwide shift.

Among them are the presence of more jobs in the suburbs, especially lower-paying ones. In turn, job losses triggered by the recession in construction, manufacturing and retail industries hit hardest in suburban areas.

An increase in affordable housing in the suburbs throughout the 2000s also had an impact, the book said.

By the end of 2010, roughly half of residents using housing vouchers lived in suburbs. At the same time, three-quarters of foreclosures occurred in suburbia, the authors said.

The number of foreclosed homes puts pressure on the community because it is not uncommon for structures to fall into disrepair as they sit empty for several years, said Kevin Welsh, fire chief and building department director for south suburban Glenwood.

“I’ve seen good residents lose their property for no other reason than the fact that they fell on hard times because their jobs were eliminated or cut back,” Welsh said. “They took care of their homes, kept them nice, but all of a sudden they were unable to pay the bills.”

The book’s authors said suburban communities around the U.S. have been caught off guard by the poverty and that both public and private agencies have struggled to meet the need.

They commended the way 19 municipalities in Chicago’s south suburbs — including Blue Island, Harvey, Calumet Heights and South Holland — banded together to apply for joint federal support.

The group, part of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, uses those resources on broader economic development priorities.

“There are promising models that are emerging on how to use limited resources,” Kneebone said.

At the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance, research associate Jennifer Clary said her organization has tracked the shift locally since 1980 with similar findings.

“It’s really clear that lower incomes that combined with the rising cost of pretty much everything in life are really crushing people in the suburbs,” Clary said.

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