Seniors and youth in Portland: intergenerational partners
It’s becoming a truism that when you get older retired seniors (55+ years) and you put them together with young people–good things happen! In programs that have seniors supporting or tutoring children for example, the benefits for both groups are mutual and measureable. The most notable national model for such arrangements is Experience Corps, a program for Americans 55+ years or older, nationwide and in the Portland area.
For example, fifty-four Portland 55+ year old volunteers served approximately 1,335 students in Experience Corps in 2007-2008. The program, administered by Metropolitan Family Service of Portland,parallels other similar national citizen volunteer efforts which mobilize seniors to help out in schools and the community.
In past surveys and in a more recent study completed at Washington University in St. Louis, researchers found ” . . that the Experience Corps program had statistically significant and substantively important effects on reading outcomes.” A helpful summary online summary highlights the major findings.
Click here for a recent “Nightly News” blurb on Experience Corps produced by MSNBC. The report highlights the measureable effects on students reading behavior.
But what are the benefits for the seniors who tutor students in Experience Corps? Testimonials abound from Experience Corps volunteers. They say that while the benefits for them are not really quantifiable, they are real. Volunteers frequently talk about a feeling of self worth that serving needy children invites. They speak of being connected, needed and involved. Listen for yourself to the some volunteers. Many of them say they can’t explain it!
Actually researchers have known for some time (at least since the early 90s) that volunteerism among those over 65 years of age combats depression and many other related mental problems that plague senior citizens. The benefits to seniors are at least as quantifiable as the benefits on the reading performance of students tutored by Experience Corps volunteers.
Experience Corps volunteers in the Portland metro area my have to travel long distances on public transportation to reach their schools for tutoring. This isolation breaking program has pioneered in bringing seniors out of their own enclaves to do community service. But there are transportation hurdles for many of them because of income and disabilities.
But what if housing developments for seniors themselves were designed to include families as well? That would mean seniors could simply pay a visit to the common areas surrounding their own apartments to participate in a variety of activities with young people. Such housing arrangements, though decidedly in the minority, have captured the attention of urban planners, developers and social service personnel alike. This pattern of housing for seniors we refer to as intergenerational housing.
A very special example of intergenerational housing in Portland, recently opened for “move in” to new residents, is Bridge Meadows. The community was developed to address the need for permanent housing arrangements for adoptive parents and foster grandparents of foster children. But it could serve as a model for a diverse population of young people and seniors who have the potential to offer hope to one another via an intergenerational housing development.
The various activities that such “communal living arrangements” breed between and among seniors, families as well as university students run the gamut from playing in“drum circles” in Reston, Virginia to listening to the daily violin practice of music students housed in close proximity to seniors in Cleveland, Ohio. Take a look!
The benefits of intergenerational housing make good economic and marketing sense as well. Developments of 200 to 250 residential unitsexclusively designed for families or an equal number devoted exclusively to senior units market poorly in many areas. Intergenerational housing developments prove more feasible for smaller rural communities and such developments invite sharing of resources.
In 2008 HUD (Housing and Urban Development) announced availability of funds for intergenerational housing demonstration projects (2 to 4 projects, $2 million) and invited applications–a nascent sign of change in HUD’s policies up to that point. Vulnerable populations in every community, like for example, ‘grandparent caregivers’ who rent, would be greatly strengthened by further increases in HUD funding for these kinds of developments. About 3 out of 10 grandparent caregivers live in overcrowded quarters and 60% (in one study) spent 30% of their income on rent.
