Adi Talwar
A mid-October afternoon at the Castle Hill Senior Center in the Bronx.
The authority is racing to fix boilers ahead of winter’s chill. But the danger of extreme summer heat is still on the minds of NYCHA senior-center workers and members.
A package of Council bills would mandate more workplace testing, but an administration official says that’s not the best way to detect a subtle form of bias that often intersects with other types of discrimination.
New York City’s seniors are already underutilizing public benefits available to them. But for non-citizen seniors, that reluctance has grown in the past year, a result of alarm from the changes to federal tests for admissibility.
Opposition from police unions and lukewarm support from Democrats doomed efforts to ease the path to parole for aging prisoners this year. But supporters say they intend to keep pushing for a conversation about violence, rehabilitation and safety.
Overall, the budget for the Department for The Aging will grow 13 percent in 2020 from the previous year, reaching $411 million.
For senior citizens and the disabled, life in the shelters—and the effort to exit to a permanent home—bring unique challenges.
‘We will fight this tooth and nail,’ said one Councilmember of a proposal to shut down several social clubs now operated by NYCHA.
A hearing revealed that Councilmembers struggle with how to oversee a convoluted system where the state has taken on a dominant role.
The more than 600 fiscal intermediaries statewide allows elderly and disabled people to hire and manage personal assistants. Critics say the governor’s executive budget would cut that number by at least 90 percent by changing eligibility requirements.
Provider after provider, several with tears in their eyes, expressed dismay at the city’s inadequate reimbursement rate for meals.