ElderWeb

PRESS RELEASE

National Church Residences (NCR) and the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) launched a hotline today to assist low-income senior victims of Hurricane Katrina find transitional and permanent housing. Effective immediately, senior residents in need of affordable housing are urged to call (800) 401-3340 around the clock to be connected to housing resource professionals trained to evaluate and locate available affordable senior housing communities nationwide.

Early reports estimate that more than 3000 units of affordable senior housing were lost to Hurricane Katrina, resulting in the displacement of thousands of low-income seniors. NCR and AAHSA have pooled their resources to help low-income seniors relocate to NCR and AAHSA-sponsored affordable senior housing communities nationwide.

In a joint statement, Thomas W. Slemmer, NCR president and CEO, and Larry Minnix, AAHSA president and CEO, stated, 'œIt'™s our expectation that the combination of NCR'™s vast affordable senior housing portfolio and its extensive service coordination program, as well as AAHSA'™s expansive member housing network, will be significant resources toward helping low-income seniors who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina to find both temporary and permanent housing at various locations across the country.'

National Church Residences is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1961, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. NCR owns and/or manages 260+ senior and family-based communities in the United States and Puerto Rico, as well as five health care facilities in Ohio. NCR currently has 18 other properties in development throughout the country.

The members of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (www.aahsa.org) serve two million people every day through mission-driven, not-for-profit organizations dedicated to providing the services people need, when they need them, in the place they call home. Our members offer the continuum of aging services: adult day services, home health, community services, senior housing, assisted living residences, continuing care retirement communities, and nursing homes. AAHSA's commitment is to create the future of aging services through quality people can trust.

CONTACT
Patrick Higgins (NCR)
614-273-3514
phiggins@ncr.org
Lauren Shaham (AAHSA)
202-508-1219
lshaham@ncr.org

The Detroit Free Press reports that many grocers are having difficulty keeping elderly customers from taking their shopping carts home with them. Eighty-year-old Southfield Councilman Sidney Lantz plans to discuss this problem at next week's city council meeting. He said grocery store managers are seeing carts disappear in especially large numbers in neighborhoods that have many elderly residents -- and the carts often show up in the parking lots of senior citizen high-rises. Lantz says the frailer seniors need to lean on the carts to get their groceries home, and proposes that the city purchase 100 collapsible carts -- at $17 apiece -- and give them to seniors in need so that they won't have to take the grocery store carts. Lois Hitchcock, 70, chairwoman of Southfield's Commission on Senior Adults, says she doesn't think the solution is feasible. Bill Knox, a 59-year-old communications representative for the AARP, calls it ageism, and said "until someone can demonstrate that older citizens are responsible for stealing shopping carts, I'm reluctant to see this as an issue."

The American Senior Housing Association (ASHA) reports that construction of senior housing properties in 2000 dropped by nearly half over the prior year. They found 591 properties under construction in 1999, but only 320 in 2000. The organization attributes much of the decrease to problems accessing the capital needed to build these properties, as well as some over-building of assisted living in the last few years.

The association estimates there are 20,000 professionally owned and managed senior housing buildings in the U.S. with a capacity of about 2.2 million, and about 10% of them were built in the last four years.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the village of Arlington Heights has commissioned a study on senior housing options to identify what options are available for older people, in order to respond for numerous requests from developers who want to build senior housing. Village officials are also discussing emerging problems from condo conversions which leave older tenants who are unable to purchase their units with no place to live.

The Los Angeles Times reports on a growing problem in the Los Angeles area. Elderly people are being evicted from low-income housing projects financed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The problems are erupting in rental properties where the former owner defaulted on HUD-backed loans and HUD has assumed the title. HUD is evicting the residents and attempting to re-sell the property, and putting elderly tenants on the street as a result. One example is the pending eviction of 70-year-old Evelyn Eberhardt. She was in the hospital after undergoing two major cancer surgeries last summer when she was told she had 30 days to move out of the two-bedroom, rent-stabilized unit she has lived in for 10 years.