The Social and Built Environment in an Older Society (1988) / Chapter Skim
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PROPOSALS FOR POLICY AND FURTHER RESEARCH
PROPOSALS FOR POLICY AND FURTHER RESEARCH
Pages 26-41
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From page 26... ...
Simply stated, then, the federal government wanted to elevate the quality of life for the Tow-income independent older person through improved housing; it wanted to do the same for the Towincome disabled older person through nursing home care. Yet these intended policies did not readily accommodate subsequent changes in American society in general and in the elderly population in particular.
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From page 27... ...
Nursing home construction with the aid of public funds has been greatly reduced. Experimentation with locally provided communitybased Tong-term care continues in spite of reduced public funding fueled by private sector innovations and a demand by elderly clients.
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From page 28... ...
This trend can be seen in the high proportion of public housing and Section ~ units that were provided for elderly persons in the 1970s. Thus, age can be said to have been an advantage in the distribution of scarce national housing resources.
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From page 29... ...
The reluctance of society to support these three housing models financially forced us to search for alternatives to these relatively expensive physical facilities. Social gerontologists were probably late in recognizing the strength of older people's wishes to remain in their own homes in the community.
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From page 30... ...
In attempting to delimit the scope of public responsibility and establish priorities for housing assistance, it may be necessary to exclude health and disability criteria to qualify for federal assistance in home adaptation. Soldo and Longino (in this volume)
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From page 31... ...
For example, housing subsidies for older people in the form of planned housing developments are likely to remove financial burdens from younger wage earners, allow more dwelling-unit space for growing children, and diminish the intrafamily conflict that is often associated with involuntary home sharing by adult children and their elders. Yet what is equally important is to conceptualize a person's life as an "environmental career," a notion that introduces basic theories of persons in environments with each person shouldering the task of maximizing the gains and minimizing the stresses of the various environments inhabited over the course of one's lifetime.
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From page 32... ...
This approach may be intuitive for many older people for despite the problems of nonliquidity, some 75 percent of all elderly in the United States own their own homes. Buying a home is only one of a variety of "housing adjustments" (in Struyk's terms)
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From page 33... ...
The personal factor in environmental interactions should be addressed to give adequate recognition to individual needs and the ability of older people to shape their own living environments, both as individuals and as a group. The environmental career of a person is determined in part by the nature of the environment into which the person is thrust and partly by the active choices the person makes in the selection of environments and in the shaping of either the given or the chosen environment.
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From page 34... ...
Communitybased services for elderly persons in congregate housing and in other housing alternatives can extend the period of community residence. Although neighborhood dynamics were not originally to be part of this volume's scope, Wachs' underlining of how a lack of physical security may limit personal autonomy commands attention.
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From page 35... ...
In any case, a policy that leads to creative efforts to design aspects of the physical and social environment that challenge and engage healthy but economically deprived older persons should be a priority. To sum up, the prevalence of a proportion of elderly persons with poor health and economic deprivation identifies one target group of older people on whom it is appropriate to focus as subjects for environmentally significant subsidy programs.
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From page 36... ...
The "doers" those who actually design our physical and to some extent our social environments and the risks of such housing are at the far end of the chain of knowledge generation that begins with theoretical biology, psychology, and other academic disciplines. Although some designers active in the investigation or exploration of person-environment relationships are themselves researchers or are research oriented, the majority of their peers are not.
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From page 37... ...
Research is also needed on the multigenerational effects of housing services directed toward older people. There is a need to document more thoroughly the indirect benefits to adult children and to grandchildren of the economics of housing assistance and the social consequences of separate living arrangements.
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From page 38... ...
For example, the service block concept used in Sweden is one of many forms evolving outside the United States that could be tested experimentally in this country. Congregate housing service programs could be effectively concentrated in housing sites that will give preference to elderly persons.
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From page 39... ...
The Vulnerable Aged In portraying some of the current approaches to the problems of the vulnerable aged, Soldo and Longino raise many as yet unanswered questions about the alternative pathways to care by household members versus nonhousehold members and to care by family versus formal organizations. For example, would it be helpful to know what personal characteristics of an impaired person generate the desire to continue to live alone and retain autonomy?
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From page 40... ...
Wachs' identification of such factors as institutional resistance to resource pooling and the incentives to potential fraud in the voucher approach illustrate the multiplicity of unanswered questions still remaining after years of demonstration transportation projects. There is a clear need for more disciplined research in evaluating contrasting approaches to satisfying the mobility needs of an aging population.
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From page 41... ...
Similarly, there are many important environmental topics that simply could not be addressed within the limits of the resources available for this project. Some of the missing topics include such areas as rural aging; neighborhood and community planning; the performance of nursing homes, acute hospitals, mental hospitals, and nonresidential facilities; the role of the family; the ethical underpinnings and values to be achieved; and the cultural aspects of person-environment interactions.
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