2020 Community Needs Survey

One in 10 seniors in Nashville live in poverty

BY HANNAH HERNER

One in 10 seniors live in poverty, according to the 2020 Community Needs Evaluation, a report put together by Metro Nashville Social Services.

Local organizations look for ways to make fixed incomes stretch, and keep seniors independent for as long as possible, but there are limits to this help.

“It surprised me how low the fixed incomes are of so many seniors when they get to a certain point, and that you know, you might have $700 per month, not in the workforce anymore, no ability to increase that amount,” says Gretchen Funk, chief program officer of FiftyForward. “So it makes for so many challenges. It's a shame, but not a surprise [that one in 10 live in poverty].”

With that fixed income comes challenges with finding affordable housing, especially if the person has been evicted in the past or has a criminal record, or if they have a non-senior living with them. Add on top of that, add the unfamiliarity of using the internet for research and housing applications.

“I think what happens with seniors, is that they have other barriers that relate to physical frailty or cognitive decline, and the limited resources that make it hard for them to even know what's out there to help them. So you have the issue, but how can you even connect? You know there's a lot of bureaucracy, we all know that, you know there are benefits that might be there but are hard to access,” says Funk. “So a lot of what we do is to be sure that we are up to date with anything that's available for seniors, so that when they get to us, then we can connect them to what's available.”

That’s why the Greater Nashville Regional Council and FiftyForward both staff helplines.

These organizations help seniors cut through the bureaucracy and online forms to get affordable housing and other resources.

Once they’re in housing, GNRC and Fifty Forward strive to get people the help they need to take care of themselves and their home, so they can stay there, and out of a nursing home. According to a study from AARP released in 2020, Tennessee ranks 43rd in the country for overall quality of long-term services and support for seniors. The state also ranks 43rd in supply of home health aides, according to the same study.

This is something that comes up often for GNRC and FiftyForward. The organizations they contract with to provide the care don’t have the staffing they need. So waiting lists grow. And once on that waiting list, there’s a hierarchy, in an effort to ensure those the most in need get care first.

“If they're on our waiting list, we try to contact them every so often,” says Sara Fowler, director of the Department of Aging and Disability with GNRC. “We have certain timeframes that we do follow ups, to see if their needs have changed, because maybe their eligibility has increased, or their priority has increased, their needs have increased. So we can find that information out and possibly provide services.”

GNRC and FiftyForward often connect folks with the TennCare-funded CHOICES and OPTIONS programs, which provide care in the home. The latter has a two-year-long waitlist, and the former requires that the person needs a very high level of care, like the level of a nursing home.

Bonnie Peters, a participant in FiftyForward’s food delivery and day services at one of the organization’s seven area centers, says the program staff helped her figure out if she could get food stamps and helped her find affordable housing. Now she lives somewhere that’s based on her income.

Through the FiftyForward Fresh program, the organization distributes pre-made meals to about 150 seniors each week, including Bonnie.

She says it brings peace to her and her family that there are people from FiftyForward checking up on her.

“If I don't make it here, one day that I'm scheduled to come, they will call and check. Are you OK? Is everything all right? I think it helps you to be able to stay independent,” Peters says. “The food, that helps a lot. Just the getting out is really big. But being able to socialize and meet other people and help out, it makes you feel needed and appreciated.”

But not all people have the support of family like Peters. FiftyForward takes on conservatorship for about 30 people a year, an emergency court-ordered power of attorney for seniors who don’t have a trusted friend or family member to look after their affairs.

For the conservatorship program there are fees, and while the nonprofit has taken on pro-bono clients in the past, its budget doesn’t allow for that at this time. There are 35 to 40 people in the program in any given year who receive 24/7 on-call support, but Funk knows the need is much higher. Seniors need help with tasks and companionship, but they’re also really vulnerable. So they don’t want to let just anyone help out.

“We advocate with the court all the time and probate court realizes that there's a huge need for people to represent the needs of the disenfranchised, but it's a hard problem to solve, to find folks who really will always have the best interests of the person at heart, take on what is really a huge responsibility,” Funk says.

Fowler would like to see organizations have more capacity and funds that are less regulated. This tends to be true of any government funding. Most of GNRC’s comes from the government’s Older Americans Act, which is designed to fund critical services for seniors. And as people age, the GNRC doesn’t want to take on more cases unless they know the funding will be there for years to come.

“I would love the freedom of how to best serve people,” Fowler says. “A lot of times, any agencies that raise funding, you have to follow the eligibility of the funding, the contracts, you know, all those things. And that's hard for other people like outside people to see, it does feel like oh, they're, they're just not helping, or they're not doing enough. But a lot of agencies are limited by the constraints of the funding.”