News & Updates
Today, LiveOn NY announced a partnership with the Reframing Aging Initiative, which is a multi-year strategy to counteract ageism and improve the way policymakers, stakeholders, and the public think about aging and older people.
For decades, LiveOn NY has come to the City prior to budget adoption to highlight the importance of the aging services network, and to share the fact that, despite providers work in communities across our City, the Department for the Aging (DFTA) budget remains at less than ½ of 1% of the overall budget. Even with a growing, increasingly diverse older adult population, this has yet to be redressed. In fact, in recent years, providers have been promised millions of dollars in funding for Senior Centers that never came to be allocated, while also experiencing significant cuts and uncertainty to the much needed Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) initiative.
The time is now to commit to older New Yorkers and remove the barriers that have pushed out communities. Unfortunately, LiveOn NY and our members have seen the hurdles older adults have experienced to simply get a shot, and distribution has also revealed the racial inequities that already plague communities of color. As it stands, Black and brown residents, who represent 22% of the City’s population, have only received 9% of the vaccines.
Currently, more than 11,500 older adults are on waiting lists for State Office for the Aging (SOFA) community based services, particularly waiting lists for home-delivered meals, case management, home care, and transportation that have arisen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Such services enable older adults in counties across New York to age safely and independently in their communities, avoiding unwanted moves to costlier institutional care settings. This is likely the tip of the iceberg in regards to demand across the state, as federal stimulus funds have helped keep larger waiting lists at bay, and the mere presence of a waiting list is often untenable for an older adult in need, forcing the individual to make the immediate decision to enter an institutional setting.
The vaccine distribution in New York continues to reveal the gaps as older New Yorkers of color are less likely to have access to the internet and technology and yet, we as a State, as a City, and in counties across New York, continue an over-reliance on the use of technology to distribute information and access to this life saving vaccine.
