Senior Research Associate Mim Evans at the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University says creating communities that help all residents is imperative to adapt to our changing world.
"Well, the first thing that made me want to study it is that we are undeniably an aging country, an aging world for a good bit of the world," Evans said in a phone interview with WVIK. "By 2030, there'll be more people over the age of 65 in our country than there will be people under the age of 18. So this isn't something that's off in the future that might happen. This is something that has already happened and will just continue to become a more significant part of our community."
Evans says looking for improvements for older residents in the community will benefit all residents. According to Evans, municipalities do not need specific plans to address aging residents; they need to incorporate that knowledge into all other sectors so that it becomes second nature for local governments when crafting city action plans.
"I think that for a long time, and I certainly fell victim to this as well, we kind of thought about the last, at this point I'd have to say the last third maybe of people's lives as being kind of a static time period or time period of slow decline. And that mostly you needed to make sure that people had the physical care that they needed," Evans said. "Well, that's not really what we mean by age-friendly, and that's not the situation with the oldest residents in our communities these days."
Evans expands, saying older residents want to be involved in their community. That means offering more community events, bolstering public transit, and allowing events and services to be held within neighborhoods.
A significant aspect of their policy profile is housing, something most Americans are struggling to find and retain. Evans says older Americans are staying in their current, often larger, homes because nothing is available to meet their needs. Not so much retirement and nursing homes but smaller properties built for older residents in mind closer to community services, which would benefit all residents.
"So by providing better options that appeal to people who no longer are in the family-raising stage of life, those people will be more likely to put those homes on the market, increasing the supply for younger families who are looking for a better home," Evans said. "And hopefully that also makes them more affordable by there being more that are available."
Another aspect that older Americans noted in their focus groups is healthcare. She notes a silver lining in the ongoing pandemic is that telemedicine is expanding, allowing more Americans to seek care without having to leave their homes.
"So as we look for ways to make health care more accessible for older people, we will actually be making it more accessible for everybody," Evans said.
The research team noted that 25% of the total American workforce is over the age of 55, which is causing institutional knowledge loss and workforce shortages.
"We don't have the luxury of the large workforce that we had generations ago. And that making continuing to work more appealing and easier for older workers will be of great value to everybody, to the older workers who will be able to stay engaged and also continue to bring in additional income beyond their retirement savings in Social Security and also to the businesses that are going to be in need of their expertise and our communities who are going to be in need of their labor," Evans said.
The team, supported by a transformational grant from the McHenry County Foundation, worked with the city of Woodstock, Illinois, to create an age-friendly action plan. The grant allowed them to create a task force of numerous community members to speak on housing, healthcare, social clubs and park maintenance.
Evans says the broad-based plan informs the city to consider its aging population in every decision to ensure projects support everyone.
"It can be addressed by preparing one of these broad-based plans, which I think is great for allowing the community to then coordinate its response and to bring everybody to the table," Evans said. "The other approach, and this is something we're also doing at CGS with the many communities that we prepare other kinds of plans for, is that every other plan that is made, for example, a comprehensive land use plan or a downtown revitalization plan or a park district plan, whatever it might be, that each of these has a component that overtly addresses the needs of an aging population."
Evans says it's a good challenge for communities to face, and everyone hopes to be a part of the older resident group at some point, so it's in everybody's interests to be age-friendly in community development.
The policy profile is attached below.
