26th Annual Aging Advocacy Day Highlights the Need for #Action4Aging

On May 4th, LiveOn NY held its 26th Annual City Advocacy Day, hosting a virtual rally where we were joined by more than 150 older adults and senior services professionals calling for real investments in senior services.

Our program included speakers:

• Council Member Chin, Chair of the City Council Committee on Aging

• Council Member Levine, Chair of the City Council Committee on Health

• Khristel Simmons, Director of Food & Nutrition Services, Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center

• Donna Atmore-Dolly, Executive Director, Allen Community Non-profit Programs

• Caroline Trim, Participant, Goddard Riverside Community Center

• Carlyn Cowen, Chief Policy & Public Affairs Officer, Chinese-American Planning Council

Our message was clear: It is time for the City to invest in senior services, namely: $48 million towards Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) for human services workers, $16.6 million for home-delivered meals programs, investments in technology, and more. See our full list of advocacy priorities here.

Following the virtual rally, participants also made calls to Council Members to amplify the need for funding for senior services in the budget.

The day also included a tweetstorm, with providers sharing their calls for investments in senior services and calling for the City to authorize Senior Centers to reopen in-person services with proper guidance. Using the hashtag #Action4Aging, providers and older adults alike made their voices heard!

But the advocacy didn’t stop there… Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, joined by LiveOn NY and our partner, United Neighborhood Houses, also coordinated an opportunity on May 4th for older adults to share their calls for Senior Centers to reopen in person. Using the hashtag #OpenOurSeniorCenters, dozens of older New Yorkers took pictures sharing messages of what they miss most about their senior center, to demonstrate why it’s critical that these spaces reopen.

In all, our 26th Annual Advocacy Day was unlike any other, and we’re just getting started. Thank you to all of the participants who joined our rally, made calls, took pictures, or shared tweets to demand #Action4Aging.

Check out highlights from the day, below!

Soon 1 in 5 New Yorkers will be over the age of 60. With an aging City, we must create a better future to age in for all NYers. #Action4Aging #OpenOurSeniorCenters @galeabrewer @liveonny @UNHNY. pic.twitter.com/6PIRyI5Gbw

— Manny Cantor Center (@MannyCantorNYC) May 4, 2021

Thank you to all of the participants of our Advocacy Day!

Advocacy WINS in the State Budget

While there's much still to be done, today, we're celebrating the strides made in this year's State Budget — namely funding to address waiting lists for senior services!

Thank you to all of the organizations and individuals that made calls, sent emails, and raised your voices to advocate for senior services to receive additional support in the New York State Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Budget. Late Tuesday night, the state finalized a budget that included significant changes to the states revenue sources, support of excluded workers, funding for education, and new investments in senior services such as funding to address waiting lists and more.

Below represents an overview of changes related to items LiveOn NY, and our members and partners, have advocated for in the budget:

NEW FUNDING WINS

• $8 million to address waiting lists for services throughout New York State.

• $2,022,013 to provide a 1% Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to human services workers contracted through NY State Office for the Aging (NY), as well as additional funding for 1% COLAs through other agencies.

• $250,000 to bolster the Long-Term Care Ombudsmen Program.

• $950,000 to support Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs), particularly with respect to the provision of nursing services.

• Year 6 of the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative (ESSHI) capital funding.

• $13 million for a first-of-its-kind AAPI Emergency Fund $10 million of which will be allocated to community-based organizations and $3 million to implement data disaggregation.

In addition to Governor Cuomo, LiveOn NY shares our deepest thanks to our champions in the legislature that fought to make these wins possible: Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, Speaker Heastie, Senate Aging Chair Senator May, Assembly Aging Chair Assembly Member Kim, and long-standing champions Senator Krueger, Senator Addabbo, Senator Biaggi, Assembly Member Joyner, and Assembly Member Niou, and freshman champion, Assembly Member Clark, among others.

Our State Work Doesn't Stop Here...

Below are priorities that we will continue to build momentum to be included in future budgets and through the end of this legislative session:

• Full funding for waiting lists. While the additional $8 million allocated this year is significant, we needed $27 million to end waiting lists in New York this year. We won't stop fighting for it.

• Fair Pay for Home Care to ensure all home care workers can receive a living wage.

• Additional funding for the Long-Term Care Ombudmen Program, investments in the technology infrastructure of senior services providers, and funding for senior nutrition.

• Enactment of legislation, including:

  • S64 / A1524 Statewide SNAP Restaurant Meals Program

  • S598B / A3922 Reimagining Long-Term Care Task Force

  • S2193 / A3807 Affordable Housing Five-Year Capital Plan

LiveOn NY Testimony on NYCHA Developments and Senior Centers

We’re proud to testify to the New York City Council to ensure older adults can safely aging in NYCHA developments. Below is testimony submitted by LiveOn NY to the New York City Council Committees on Aging and Public Housing.

To learn more about upcoming New York City Council hearings: click here. To register to testify: click here. To watch live and past hearings: view here!

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New York City Council
Committee on Aging
Chair, Council Member Chin
Committee on Public Housing
Chair, Council Member Ampry-Samuel
April 7, 2021
Oversight – Seniors aging in place in NYCHA during a pandemic

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on seniors aging in place in NYCHA during the pandemic.

LiveOn NY’s members include more than 100 community-based nonprofits that provide core services which allow all New Yorkers to thrive in our communities as we age, including senior centers, home-delivered meals, affordable senior housing, elder abuse prevention, caregiver supports, NORCs and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age.

In New York City, NYCHA represents one of the greatest providers of affordable housing for low-income seniors. Currently, 38% of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) households are headed by an older adult age 62 and over, and an estimated 7,700 units are designated specifically for older adults. Just as the buildings are aging, so are the tenants that occupy them, making the need for quality, safe services in NYCHA paramount to the success of the community. Unfortunately, however, providers of services such as Senior Centers and NORCs that operate in NYCHA community spaces face daily challenges just to keep the doors open.

While an emphasis must be placed on improving the living conditions of residents living in NYCHA developments, it’s also important to acknowledge senior service providers have not been immune to the challenges during the pandemic.

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, and potentially exacerbating the pandemics impacts, inadequate conditions in NYCHA developments including poor ventilation systems, broken elevators, leaking roofs, and recurring mold have long been one of the many challenges providers have worked to alleviate. While working to mitigate these repairs, providers are frequently faced with fines and violations, in addition to lengthy approval processes by NYCHA that exacerbate the timeline for repairs.

The impacts of these fines and conditions are not only monetary: instead of spending critical time providing critical services for NYCHA residents and the surrounding community, providers are forced to become experts in the nuances of repair systems wholly outside of their job description in order to simply stay afloat. This impact cannot be understated as these non-profit providers work tirelessly to provide high quality services to those who need it most and, through these suboptimal systems, are being consistently hamstrung from meeting their city-mandated and personally motivated aims. Now, in the midst of a pandemic, it’s critical that these repairs and conditions are addressed as they pose an even greater risk for residents and staff as we look ahead to resume in-person services and programming.

In response to these difficulties LiveOn NY recommends:

• The City must work to continue to increase capital funding for public housing to support ventilation upgrades and other critical infrastructure improvements that will improve both residential and community space within NYCHA;

• Redirect fines to ensure nonprofits are not penalized for violations that are out of their control.  Nonprofit human service providers, who lack site control and rely on NYCHA to make repairs, should not be subject to citations and fines from DOHMH or FDNY due to NYCHA’s failure to make those repairs. When violations are found during inspections, and if these violations have already been reported to NYCHA by the provider, the provider should not be penalized. At this time, the fine should be automatically negated, and NYCHA should be notified by the fining agency of a need to cure the violation in question;

• Restore and baseline all one-time funds for NYCHA Social Clubs. All funding for senior programming in NYCHA community spaces should not rely on one-shot funding from the Administration, but should be sustainably baselined and incorporated into the full scope of DFTA services;

• Fully fund the Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) Initiative, which is critical to ensuring nonprofits operating in NYCHA remain viable into the future. Recent cuts to the ICR Initiative have threatened the viability of New York City’s nonprofit human service providers, leaving current NYCHA Senior Center, NORC, and other providers scrambling to pay staff and get by. To truly support nonprofits the City must reverse course and fully implement the ICR Initiative;

• Include funding promises made to Senior Centers in the FY22 Executive Budget. Fully allocate the $10 million in Senior Center Model Budget funding and $5 million in Senior Center Kitchen funding to ensure that this workforce -- made up of predominantly women and people of color -- are paid competitively for their work. This funding will support not only Senior Centers located in NYCHA, but the broader Senior Center portfolio.

Additionally, LiveOn NY strongly supports the following bills that would potentially improve operations for providers and transparency in NYCHA developments:

• Intro 1827, introduced by Council Member Ampry-Samuel, is an act to provide a dedicated NYCHA liaison within DFTA. To ensure there is a clear and consistent line of coordination, there should be an individual within the Department for the Aging (DFTA) whose sole focus is to coordinate with NYCHA on matters impacting older adult public housing residents. This individual could support and streamline processes for DFTA funded services that may include establishing a system to receive comments and complaints, delineating roles and responsibilities regarding repairs at Centers located within NYCHA developments and make recommendations to improve programs and facilities that serve older adults public housing residents.

• Intro 415, introduced by Council Member Chin, is an act to require NYCHA to report annually on Senior Centers within NYCHA buildings. As we look to create better solutions for older adults who rely on Senior Centers for critical services, receiving an annual report from NYCHA would provide service providers and community-based organizations with the necessary information and data — such as the number of people served by each center, or the programming provided at each center — to create evidence-based solutions that better support older adults and advocate for investments and legislation on the City and State level. The City Council should work with the Department for the Aging, prior to passage, to confirm if the information that would be mandated reporting under this bill is already being collected, or can be easily collected by providers, so as to not create additional data collection requirements where those don’t already exist. Further, it should be considered if this information is already available through Local Law 140.

As we look ahead to the warmer season when Senior Centers located in NYCHA will act as Cooling Centers for those in need, NYCHA developments and DFTA fiscal must work to accelerate the approval for repairs or replacements of poor HVAC systems. Further, as DFTA moves towards reopening of in-person senior services, funding and flexibility for budget amendments must be prioritized to ensure Senior Centers in NYCHA can proactively address leaks and other issues that are critical to the safety and health of staff and older adults.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing.

Social Work Month: Celebrating the Essential Workers Who Make New York A Better Place to Age

March is Social Work Month and at LiveOn NY, we celebrate our members who are essential to the work we do in making New York a better to age. Throughout the pandemic, social workers in the human services sector have been on the frontlines working tirelessly to ensure all New Yorkers have the support they need.

Here are quotes from some of our members on what moved them to become social workers and their experience as an essential worker.

LiveOn NY Stands in Solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Community

NEW YORK — March 19, 2021 —  LiveOn NY stands in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community, in light of the recent murders in Atlanta. We mourn and honor the lives tragically taken this week. For too long, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have been the target of violence, harassment, and discrimination in our nation including New York.

Throughout the pandemic, we have seen a rise in egregious acts of violence against the AAPI community. These acts of hate can not be tolerated. We must speak up, take action and stand together in unity as we root out the hate that is deeply entrenched in our nation.

We urge the City and State to show its commitment to the AAPI community by investing in community-based organizations in New York that help move the community forward. At LiveOn NY, our mission has long been to make New York a better place to age for everyone. We stand firm in our support with the Asian American and Pacific Islanders community and our commitment to building a safer, more equitable and inclusive New York for all ages.

About LiveOn NY

LiveOn NY’s members include more than 100 community-based nonprofits that provide core services which allow all New Yorkers to thrive in our communities as we age, including senior centers, home‐delivered meals, affordable senior housing, elder abuse prevention, caregiver supports, NORCs and case management. With our members, we work to make New York a better place to age. For more information, please visit our website, https://www.liveon-ny.org/

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