Aging in Our Community
A Message from W. Mark Clark, President and CEO
Last month I was visited by a dear friend from my teenage years, Alan, my youth pastor at the church I grew up in Phoenix. He and I had stayed in touch over the years. His wife had recently passed, and Alan told me he would like to come to visit for a week. We had a lot to catch up on, and as he put it, my wife Stacy was a saint to put up with all of our “church talk” from the years long past. We also spent a lot of time talking about the past few years and current events. Alan has always been a wise observer of society and both pragmatic and deeply philosophical. Reflecting on the times we find ourselves in during these post (sort of) pandemic days, he said something that really stuck with me. He observed that “COVID had broken everything.” I started to equivocate about whether it was “everything” or maybe just “nearly everything.” But that wasn’t really the point. His point, more importantly, was in what he said next, which was that it is up to all of us to decide how we will put things back together. Early in the pandemic, it was popular to compare this pandemic to previous ones, most commonly the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1920 – the one which killed one of my great-grandfathers. I imagine you may recall some of those discussions. The general wisdom was that the world (or our American slice of it) changed forever in so many ways, some for the better and some less so. It seems many of us believe we simply need to roll the clock back to February 2020, and things will all be better, but as I have been talking with folks about this observation, most know that isn’t realistic.
Time marches forward, not back. And a big part of the breaking that has occurred has been the exposure of many of our society’s deepest ills. At PCOA we are seeing this in several ways. We see it in the calls we receive from older single women, often (but not always) widows, who have been barely eking by on meager Social Security benefits and low-rent apartments. Most often, when we hear from them, their landlord, who is often some new out-of- state corporate real estate owner, has given them an eviction notice because they’ve decided they can now make more money by raising the rent out of reach or because that widow used too much gas to heat their small apartment last month and has been unable to pay the bill. And in the “post-pandemic” market, the rent and utilities for a new place often far exceed their income. What are they to do? And we are hearing about it from people who are getting COVID (yes, people still do) and developing very serious illnesses and not bouncing back. Often, they live alone. They need longer-term support from others, either at home or in a facility, but the cost of that care is increasing at a rate that outstrips their income, if the support can even be found at all. Whose responsibility is this? The stories continue to come to us at higher and higher rates, and I know my colleagues are weighed down by the magnitude of the stories. But how do we put things back together? How do we fix the brokenness? I wish I knew. Fundamental, long-term responses are required, but we often long for quick fixes as a society. They elude me.
I usually look for a more extensive public policy fix. Longer term. And indeed, we need those. But I’ve also learned something from my wonderful colleagues: it is about taking the time to show up, answer the phone, and listen to those callers. Maybe we will be able to offer some suggestions. But first and most important is that we are present and that we listen. Back at the beginning of the pandemic, during those very isolated times, I was often asked what people should do. My answer was that we should all be neighborly. Checking on our neighbors, offering a hand or a shoulder, or maybe a casserole. Be kind. And perhaps that is still a good place to start. Back in the summer and fall of 2020, I was never closer to my neighbors than I was then. And as we revisit that neighborliness, we can get more creative about the big policy fixes. Those fixes are going to require more changes and probably sacrifices from all of us. Hopefully, it will be easier to make them when we realize that we are making them for our neighbors.
W.Mark Clark President & CEO
May 2023, Never Too Late | Page 3
Pima Council on Aging
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