Our city is now the nation’s worst provider of affordable housing with only 12 affordable living units available per 100 seeking households. Fixed-income seniors comprise well over ¼ of these households and senior communities are at capacity with waiting lists up to two years. Their rents are elevating well beyond thresholds of fixed income affordability. They’re stuck where they live, paying higher and higher rents first at the expense of food, then medicine, then utilities, and having neither the physical nor monetary means to absorb the effort or costs of moving to lower rent residences even if they were available. Priced out of apartments beyond their capacity to pay, they are soon evicted with a credit black mark making it virtually impossible to rent anywhere again. Housing programs which exist to provide rent subsidies to the lowest income seniors are backed up 2 years for applications and another 2 years for placement. With few remaining possessions and fewer options, they move into high-priced weeklies until the money runs out, sending them to capacity homeless shelters, cars and city streets. The fortunate few may rent rooms from strangers, becoming easy marks for cons, theft and crime. And for all of them, options dissipate eventually cycling them back to those same shelters and streets they fought to avoid. Most are 70-95 with progressive health conditions, few if any basic computer skills to navigate sparse online resources and no available surviving family to intervene. An entirety lost, neglected and unemployable generation with no remaining resources, transportation or connections, their final days are spent on the streets, some in abusive nursing homes, and others in the silence of mortuaries.
This is the actual real life progression of old age for so many elderly you will never ever meet.
If this makes you sad, don’t miss the more important opportunity to be angry.
If you want to be part of the change, help #TeamHopeLink stop this now.

These efforts to stop the virus are at the very least counterintuitive. Humans are programmed to expect that a deliberate action is supposed to create or build something that will thrive. To act now to create the exact opposite result seems entirely unrewarding and counterintuitive to our very nature. It’s a new way of thinking toward a solution for so many but a smart and necessary one. #thenewnormal

Every end is a new beginning, and the backside of these events will have unimaginable takeaways to address and resolve. The calendars and economies of every household, community, state and industry will necessarily restructure to recover the losses, consequences and fallout. So when this event has subsided, voluntary, peaceful, patient cooperation will be more necessary than ever. Unprecedented times. Unprecedented measures. Unprecedented consequences.
But we are Americans, an unprecedented nation of overcomers who can show the world how it’s done if we will replace selfish ways with generous ones and welcome a new normal. Adapt and change, emerge and thrive again.

The past 72 hours has changed our way of life more than anyone ever imagined and more is coming faster than most will be able or willing to process or unfortunately for some, believe. Apathetic underreaction and panicked overreaction are now strange bedfellows—both enemies of a solution that can save lives and preserve sanities at a fraction of the cost we might otherwise pay to our future. Be smart and do your part so we can look back on these awful times more sooner than later. Adapt, change, live and thrive.

By anyone’s count, he was seven times older but never once left her side.
He was her warmth, her comfort, and the one with whom she cuddled with each night and woke each morning. She prepared their meals and they took walks both mornings and evenings while she reminisced about the days when they were younger souls on longer journeys. Her companion and protector, together 15 years without so much as an argument, they were best friends until last week when he curled up at her side never to wake again.
Others may pass but loneliness isn’t quite as lonely when you’re old and have enjoyed a lifetime of love and loyalty with a dog.