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The Adams administration is considering more than $16 million in cuts to resources it provides to senior citizens across the five boroughs in the city’s budget next year. These reductions are coming at the same time that the number of New Yorkers over 65 is expected to exponentially increase – more than any other age group – in the immediate future.
Brooklyn Councilmember Crystal Hudson, a Democrat who chairs the Committee on Aging, called the anticipated cuts both “baffling” and “unconscionable.” On March 14, Hudson led a preliminary hearing that examined potential cuts to the budget of the city’s Department for the Aging that would affect New Yorkers 65 years and older.
“They’ve made the neighborhoods that everyone wants to live in hip and cool and attractive,” Hudson said. “And in turn, what we continue to say to them is, ‘We don’t value you, we don’t care about you. Good luck!’”
Budget cuts have plagued the Department for the Aging for decades. Currently, the department’s current funds, which total nearly $540 million, are paltry compared to other city agencies — amounting to just over 0.5% of the city’s more than $100 billion budget. The agency could lose $16 million in funding, which will affect its home-delivered meal programs, adult day care centers and the size of its staff, according to a preliminary budget released in January.
These cuts will compound others already made this year. After the city ended meal delivery services for seniors during the pandemic, many began turning to senior centers for food.
The Adams administration did not respond to a request for comment.
Currently, nearly 1 in 5 New Yorkers is a senior citizen. But the gradual aging of Baby Boomers – the second-largest living adult generation in the U.S. – means that seniors are now outpacing other age groups in growth. Within the past decade, the population of seniors in the city increased by more than 363,000, compared to a decline of roughly 138,000 New Yorkers under 65, according to the Center for an Urban Future.
The number of seniors living in poverty is also on the rise – a 37.4% increase from 2011 to 2021, according to the same data. And a wave of immigration after the loosening of federal regulations in the 1960s means that for the first time in history the majority of these older New Yorkers will be foreign-born, or people of color.
It’ll pose a whole host of needs that the city will need to meet, according to experts.
“The boomer generation was more diverse than the generation that preceded it,” said Eli Dvorkin, the editorial and policy director for the Center for an Urban Future. “That has real implications for policy in New York City, where the need for culturally competent services for older adults, for multilingual services for older adults, is greater than ever.”
Dvorkin said that this trend – as well as a decrease in younger New Yorkers – means that officials must prepare for a city with residents that are older than before. These considerations, he said, should also show up outside of the Department for the Aging, and in “transportation planning, in economic development planning and harnessing older entrepreneurs in workforce development programs.”
Hudson said the city is also in dire need of “a cultural shift in how we treat older adults.”
“There are many other cultures across the world that value older adults, that show them deference,” she said. “As people grow older, they make sure that they have housing, they make sure that they have health care.”
Claire Pendergrast, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Syracuse University who studies aging populations, says that governmental policy is often focused on individual, instead of community-based, help.
“In many ways, we are willing as a country to support older adults and their welfare through Social Security and Medicare, but we do fail consistently in terms of adequately investing in community-based support,” she said.
Despite the comparable lack of governmental support, senior citizens are ironically the most active voters. They consistently turn out to the polls more than any other demographic. Those aged 70-79 had the highest turnout rate of any age group in the 2021 primary and general elections, according to a report from the NYC Campaign Finance Board.
The Council is expected to submit its response to the mayor’s preliminary budget before Adams releases his executive budget next month.
“We’ll see if he understands the importance of older adults, and what older adults have meant to the city,” Hudson said.
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