Study: San Diego Senior Centers Unprepared For Over 65 Population Surge

Speaker 1: 00:00 In the next decade. One in four people living in San Diego County will be a senior citizen. A recent study says the network of senior care centers in the county may not be prepared for that kind of population growth. Bob Kelly, CEO of San Diego Seniors Community Foundation says one way to prepare is through philanthropy. Bob, welcome. Thank you. Hey, what demographic changes when we see in the San Diego County population in the next 10 years, Speaker 2: 00:26 we're going to go to about 4 million people by the year. 2030 about a million. Two 1,000,001 are going to be over the age of 60, which is an incredible change. So where wherever you look, one out of four persons are going to be over the age of 60. Also part of that statistic, it's an another interesting statistic and about a third of that million are going to be senior orphans and these are people who have nobody in their lives in the, in from a family perspective. Um, so we're going to have close to three hundred thousand four hundred thousand senior orphans in San Diego by the year 2030. Speaker 1: 01:03 Hmm. So why did you commission this report and why the focus on seniors centers and not on say housing or prescription drug prices or something like [inaudible]. Speaker 2: 01:13 Yeah. Um, we decided to do this report because I'm knowing all of the seniors that were going to have, and knowing the statistics that about 80% of seniors want to live in their own home. They don't want to move to a facility or a senior complex. So you look at the senior centers, they should be and the hub of, of the, uh, for the resources for those seniors that are living in those communities. And so we decided it's time to look and see how we doing right now with all of these senior centers. It's pretty sad to see the status of, um, we have about 28 senior centers in San Diego. Um, 21 of them, uh, were built, uh, 30 years ago. 11 of them have been built 40 years ago. Speaker 1: 01:55 So you described the outlook as depressing, um, sort of explained what it is that senior centers are used for. How do they serve, uh, seniors? Speaker 2: 02:05 Yeah. The Classic Senior Center right now is that what everybody has the perception of you and it's dark and it's dingy and it's a lot of old people and they're playing Bingo and they're sitting around just talking. I'm maybe needing all of that's well, it's good and it, it gets people socialized, gets them out of the house. But it really, the, the futures senior centers are just completely different. A good example is that seniors over the age of 60 or over the age of 55, um, I have a very difficult time looking for jobs, uh, finding jobs. People don't want to hire senior citizens. Um, as a new senior center would actually have job training programs, job referral programs in the senior center. People know that I can call my local senior center and I can go down there. I can learn for example, that, uh, how to interview because quote the old days, you'd have a lot of face to face interviews. Speaker 2: 02:59 Guess what? Nowadays it's, ah, it's on the computer. Well, a lot of these seniors, they don't know how to do that. Not only that, they don't have, um, a Internet service or they don't have a laptop. So they can go down there and they can learn how to do job interviews over the Internet, how to get a job in this new economy. And so this is what you hope senior centers senior centers will be in the future? Correct. Um, but as it stands today, only five of the senior centers have computers. If you look at a few of the senior centers, like one in the South Bay, their annual budget is $26,000 a year. Rancho Bernardo, uh, their annual budgets, $80,000, they have no staff. It's all volunteer. Think about a modern YMC, a 20 to $40 million complex, average budgets anywhere from two to $4 million. You look at our, the senior centers, we have now again, budgets, $100,000, no staff. Speaker 2: 03:53 And when you talk about the budgets, where does funding come from for these senior centers? Um, it's a mixture. Some of them are run by cities and the city of San Diego has a few that they run. Um, the county of San Diego has some that they run. And then there's some not for profit organizations that have been set up. Like for example, Borrego springs. Um, they have a small senior center on Borrego Springs. It's run by a local not-for-profit, their budget. So it's probably 30, $40,000 a year. Um, they only may service 20, 30 people a day with the funding that they have. Are these senior centers even able to provide meals? Yes, some of them do. And they have congregate meals. They work with different organizations like meals on wheels, um, serving seniors. Some other organizations, they'll bring in the food, but I'm a real sophisticated senior center should have a commercial kitchen. Speaker 2: 04:45 And so this does, this is sort of a snapshot of the problem. Ultimately. What are you hoping to accomplish with this report? Well, we want people to wake up and understand where we are right now. Also, if you look at the world of philanthropy, less than 2% of charitable dollars goes to help seniors, which is when you think about the billions of dollars that are granted out every year from individuals, corporations, Cetera, it's pretty dismal that only 2% goes to seniors. So part of our goal is to increase the philanthropy that because we believe government can't take care of it all. Government can't. The cities, the counties, they can't run all these senior centers. You know, they don't, it's just don't have enough money. Um, but we believe philanthropy can, again, using the models of the y MCA, the boys and girls clubs in San Diego, looking at the money that they have raised over the years to be able to provide the services to, to the young people of San Diego. Speaker 2: 05:36 But is there opportunity at all, even to partner with the county? You know, the county launched its own plan last year, the age, well, San Diego Action Plan, which also includes goals and action steps. A, what do you think of that plan? Is it something your foundation could be involved with? Oh, yes. Uh, the county's doing a good job. I mean the county is doing a good job. Um, there's some, there's other groups that are working on aging in place. Um, we at the San Diego Seniors Community Foundation believe that the senior centers are the core of all of that. And let's just say your mother's here in San Diego and she's 80 years old and she's isolated in her house and you're living in Boston, you're worried about your mother. That senior center could be the go to place where they can say, could you help me? My mother's by herself. Could you get her connected to the services that you're talking about that the county's putting together throughout San Diego County and governor Newsome has got this whole plan now that he wants to develop a statewide plan to, um, you know, a, a strategic plan to deal with the young, the upcoming, you know, the numbers of seniors. Speaker 2: 06:43 And what more do you believe the county and state ought to be doing or offer in terms of services for seniors? Um, again, job training programs. Very, very few have any programs geared towards helping seniors find jobs. And you know, the, some of the statistics of one on four seniors over the age of 65 are going to continue to work. They have to work. A lot of these people, their social security's $1,000 a month. That's what they're living on. And so part of all of this is getting the county, the city, and everybody to understand some of these and create new programs that would be able to support the changing demographics that are right in front of our face. I've been speaking with Bob Kelly, CEO of San Diego Seniors Community Foundation. Bob, thank you so much. Yeah. Great. Thank you.