You’re not alone. And fortunately, your local government leaders are thinking about the same issues.
The City of Dayton, which now has 25% of its population over age 55, has just finished a city-wide survey of 3,000 senior residents, not only to pool and verify seniors’ concerns, but to help the city begin developing concrete solutions.
Ellen Sizer, project planner from Planning, Neighborhoods & Development, said that in October 2023, Dayton Mayor Jeffrey Mims Jr. signed a commitment letter with the AARP Age-Friendly Initiative. The city committed to a five-year process that would take aging advocates and city stakeholders from needs assessment to action plans on neighborhood projects.
AARP provided a tool kit of resources, Sizer noted, everything from sample scripts for citizen listening sessions to lessons learned from other age-friendly communities across Ohio and the nation.
“AARP definitely wants you to succeed,” Sizer said.
The Dayton Foundation funded the survey creation, and Sizer said she relied on her 15-member steering committee of stakeholders from resources such as the Area Agency on Wellness to get the survey mailed or delivered to seniors in all neighborhoods across the city earlier this year. Surveys were also made available online.
Survey results mirrored national trends, Sizer said. Many Dayton homeowners and residents worry about staying in their homes as they age — certainly understandable, as most Dayton neighborhoods were built prior to 1960. Houses have steps inside and out. Neighborhood infrastructure like sidewalks and parks have aged and may be tough to navigate.
And while resources for city seniors are numerous, Sizer noted that transportation can be an issue.
“We heard it a lot, seniors telling us, ‘I can’t get there,” she said.
Keeping up with evolving technology, for example, cell phones or even sign-in or check-out screens at physician offices or grocery stores, was also a concern, Sizer said.
Neighborhood safety was an underlying topic, one Sizer said she plans to revisit.
“It’s such a broad topic. Is it about better lighting in neighborhoods at night? We may need a follow-up survey.”
Residents also had an opportunity to speak out in person at three listening sessions in July at the downtown Dayton Metro Library. Stakeholder agencies and community organizations, such as Omega Baptist Church, compiled comments from residents who could not make the trip and sent representatives.
Sizer said she hopes to reconvene her steering committee in August to review the full survey report from the research company and to compare the findings to other concerns voiced by area residents to stakeholder agencies.
“We want to continue uncovering those gold nuggets,” said Sizer.
The first draft of the action plan could be completed by the end of 2025, she said.
And how could the project plan affect the city’s budget? Surprisingly, Sizer said that many of the projects will probably already exist in future city budgets. For example, neighborhood improvements such as sidewalk repair will have an existing budget line item, but the survey and resulting plan will help focus Public Works to more specific areas.
“A lot of it may be about better utilizing who we have and what we have better,” said Sizer.
She added the AARP tool kit includes action plans from other communities as well as important information about available grants. Sizer also has regular meetings with Ohio AARP leaders and with the many other Ohio communities at different points on the same journey to age-friendly living.
The Coalition of Age Friendly Communities of Ohio meets quarterly to share their progress and learnings.
“CAFCO is the secret sauce,” Sizer said of the fellow planners and the working relationships she’s been able to build there.
Plus, Dayton residents will have an opportunity to speak up again. Sizer noted that a vital part of the AARP framework is re-visiting the action plan with residents to determine how it’s working, and what should be done next.
“It will be a living document,” she said.
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