On Saturday, we met as a group and took a tour of affordable housing option for seniors in San Diego. We visited six different sites downtown and ended with a seventh site in North Park. Melinda Forstey, the Chief Administrative Officer of Serving Seniors, had debriefed us at the first site with statistics regarding the state of housing in this country for seniors living below the federal poverty level of $12,490 as an annual income. First of all, while this federal poverty level has been adjusted for inflation, it still is based on the 1955 living of the average family spending one third of their income on food. We are all aware the costs of housing have dramatically increased since then, especially the high rates in San Diego. 11% of seniors aged 65 or older in California live at or below this federal poverty level. Representatives have attempted to adjust legislation to update the federal poverty level to reflect accurately to living standards of today, but not much has actually been done. As a result, many seniors have incredibly limited options for affordable housing, and the options that exist are often burdened with lengthy waitlists that don’t really move because that would require another senior to move out.
It was really exciting to see the North Park Senior Apartments because it is such a modern and progressive unit that truly paid attention to detail. It is a community that is entirely welcoming of LGBTQ seniors, and it serving as a national model for similar future developments. The complex encouraged reduced automobile dependency by offering much fewer parking spots than there are apartments, but residents seem happy to give up their car in exchange for living here. The community of residents just seems very well integrated and it was beautiful to see how they each decorated their doors to reflect themselves as a part of something bigger. There were so many shared open spaces all throughout the complex, all organized with different colored floors to engage the memory of the older residents. It’s truly a one of a kind and innovative project, and I hope that future affordable housing units can take note and grow from here.
It was really exciting to see the North Park Senior Apartments because it is such a modern and progressive unit that truly paid attention to detail. It is a community that is entirely welcoming of LGBTQ seniors, and it serving as a national model for similar future developments. The complex encouraged reduced automobile dependency by offering much fewer parking spots than there are apartments, but residents seem happy to give up their car in exchange for living here. The community of residents just seems very well integrated and it was beautiful to see how they each decorated their doors to reflect themselves as a part of something bigger. There were so many shared open spaces all throughout the complex, all organized with different colored floors to engage the memory of the older residents. It’s truly a one of a kind and innovative project, and I hope that future affordable housing units can take note and grow from here.