[Music] hello and welcome to your South Florida I'm guest host Arlene Bornstein housing affordability has been a challenge in South Florida for years but now seniors many on fixed incomes are facing growing uncertainty Rising costs increasing condo fees and stricter Building Safety assessments put in place after the surf side collapse have made it harder for many older residents to stay in their homes on today's program we will look at the factors behind this crisis the impact on our older population and the resources available to help but first how did we get here joining me to discuss this and more is Dr an meerson senior real estate specialist and transition counselor and Charlotte ma Taylor CEO of the Area Agency on Aging of Broward County thank you both for being here today so we talked about some of the issues just now um I mentioned the housing crisis and really what is driving this right now well probably and we agreed on this is affordability is the main issue that is affecting seniors and can they afford to stay in their homes and if not what are the Alternatives and can they afford the Alternatives and I would like to add to that there's a lack of affordable housing there's a shortage so it's difficult for people to find housing and on top of that we've had a increase in our living expenses increase in our electricity our food other equipment and things that we buy on a daily basis all of that's gone up and it's very expensive and then you add with the lack of affordable housing people who do own homes they've had increases in their property insurance their property taxes have gone up so all of that together has really exacerbated the situation and made it difficult for people the insurance companies have been very involved in this I had a situation several situations where we're taking roofs off houses that don't need it but they can't get insurance so if you're over a certain age they just go need a new roof well you are a senior real estate um expert and tell us specifically seniors who you work with every day uh what are they facing when they're trying to sell their homes relocate transition what are their biggest challenges well interestingly what's happening is the the single family Market is doing all right but it's the condos and the Villas that are having a lot of problems because the assessments are so high that people are not able to live in them and people are not buying them so then you've got the question of how's that going to work out as the assessments keep building on these properties are some of these seniors facing homelessness potentially I don't have a lot of clients that are facing homelessness but one of the things that I say emphatically is get a team involved to help you because a lot of these seniors are alone and it they need someone or something to help them in the plan that we developed for them Charlotte many of these seniors are blindsided by these condo assessments now people are getting a little bit more familiar so how do you step in and what do you help them get through each time they are seeing that these prices are going higher and higher well one of the things we try to do through our health line where people are calling uh to seek assistance is connect them to the right resources organizations like an the county has a lot of great programs in Broward County that we can connect them to and we provide a lot of other resources that can help people not directly with their assessment situation but we can help with providing food helping them get free legal assistance also free home repairs and other types of programs that can help them at least pay for those costs so that helps them with the cost of the assessment um the other thing I want to mention is education is extremely important because a lot of people don't know what to do and some of the condo associations are implementing these assessments with short timelines and through education they find they actually have a little bit more time to uh cover these assessments so that people have longer to pay them off so there's a lot of different things out there that can help people when they're in these types of situations and Dr an you what advice do you give folks who again are getting these assessments and are suddenly dealing with these Financial burdens well some people have to move they absolutely cannot afford them if you are on a fixed income and you're paying in one of these Senior Communities you're paying $6 $700 a month on your assessments and maybe you're getting a social security check of $3,500 how's that going to work for you it's true and the other thing it does prevent people from buying condom iums right now A friend of mine actually retired um he's a higher income person found his dream condominium but then when they told him what the assessments were he couldn't afford to pay the assessments so he didn't move through with the purchase so it not only is causing people to get evicted it also causes people not to be able to secure a home for themselves and not only that Charlotte but you're probably saying seniors giving up medication health care what are the impacts of that it's a big problem because seniors are on fixed income they had a plan they created the plan and how to live in the retirement and suddenly they're getting these assessments and they can't afford them so things like cutting your medication in half delaying on filling your prescriptions not taking your medications at all those have detrimental impacts on your health if you have a heart condition and you're not taking your medication properly the answer is you're going to end up in the emergency department or you could have premature death because you're not making sure that your heart's okay and food is another issue when people don't eat properly they skip meals which they will do to be able to pay for these assessments they can become malnourished and when you become malnourished the health conditions that you have can get worse things like osteoporosis can get worse diabetes again heart conditions so again the it's a real problem and then the third piece of that is the level of stress people are under when they can't pay these assessments causes them to have mental health issues they can go into depression get increased anxiety and all of that again it's a spiral downward it really is a big problem and so what you have is increased cost in the Health Care system and it hurts people personally so I say that's the worst thing you can do but it's happening more often than you think because people are trying to survive and Dr an as you were just saying you know downsizing could be very emotionally difficult affecting their mental well-being how do you deal with that how do you help the senior that you are working through these well there there a couple other factors that I want to mention is that seniors are living longer that's the largest population growing or this is the senior population so what's happening is we have people that are going to have to move out of state or back with families because they cannot afford to live independently especially when you're living all those years and then we add to this which we haven't even discussed yet the rising cost of assisted livings independent livings and Memory Care uh the average cost to be in one of those communities is $664,000 a year and that's the average so what is that going to mean for people on fixed income families have to step up to the plate adult children or resources but it's getting tough turning it slightly positive because it is a sad trajectory we're seeing there is affordable housing options Charlotte you may have more on those resources and how possibly someone can reach out to your agency the good news is I know in Broward County our County Commission has been really um aggressively trying to provide more affordable housing options um so that's helpful I'm not sure what's happening in BR in Dade or Palm Beach but that's actually helpful um what I'd like to see are some things that don't occur now is um low interest or no interest loans to try to help people with some of these assessments to try to make it better for them but those things aren't in place right now at least in Broward again the options right now are working with different agencies such as ours and other ones that can help people locate um housing that's available but again I sounding a little bit Bleak like Dr an the options are not there as much as we'd like them to be so what we're focusing on is helping them with other resources again connecting with someone maybe they could live with um giving them other types of resources that can help them with other things going on their life so that they have more money uh but again right now at this point I do think we need to have more options and support from our policy makers as well to create more options for that hoarding and clutter there's different things you have to navigate withing hoarding is a very serious problem um and it's not getting better ever since Co the amount of hoarding that is going on especially to isolate ated seniors is just beyond belief and there's some strategies we've developed to help with it but it's definitely becoming not only an an area psychologically but also in terms of their physical well well-being and I just want to say the definition of hoarding and serious hoarding is when you can no longer manipulate within your own home you can't eat on the dining room table because it's covered with things you know when it impacts your life like that it's pretty serious I was going to say we get referrals from different agencies we work closely with EMS as well and the fire departments because they will often times come across these individuals or hoarding because often they don't let people in their home right because they don't want people to come into their home so once we identify them we will work with them to work work with them to get them to get rid of some of the stuff now that's difficult as you know because they really don't want to let go some of those items in their home but there are resources available to help them part of it is also just identifying the people who are hoarding again because they're not going to tell people well in my experience working with hoard hoarders I have noticed that you can go in you can clean the place out you can say keep this don't keep that but if you don't get psychological help and some form of counseling they will hoard again yes I agree with you Dr you have some strategies though can you quickly give one or two if someone's struggling with that well I use a team approach because it's not just one person and we can clean somewhere out what I do is and it's kind of a fun thing is I make a memory book for for my clients that I'm helping so they may have their artwork spread out all over I say let me take a picture of that so you can have it remember it Dr an and Charlotte thank you so much for being here and giving such important information on a very critical topic for nearly a decade visual artist and photographer Diego Alejandro Weissman has been documenting The Disappearing mobile home parks of South Florida and the lives of their residents once seen as an affordable housing solution during South Florida's population boom in the 1950s and 60s these communities are now being pushed out to make way for larger often unaffordable apartment developments now his work is on display at the frost museum at FIU where a new exhibit explores the impact of this shift on longtime residents and the region as a whole we stopped by to speak with Diego about his work the people he's met and what their stories reveal about the future of affordable housing in South Florida these type of communities are disappearing or are being purchased by uh private entities and they are increasing their rent for these people at the end of the day it doesn't matter where they were taken it's what they say and how they are affecting the people that live there and are watching the images this is a show that uh portrays The Disappearance and gentrification of mobile home trailer park scen in South Florida and these images that you see here are coming from a book with the same name that took about seven years to be documented and researched through a process of going through these communities and talking to the different neighbors especially the ones that were facing eviction and also trying to reconcile uh what was their way forward and also looking at the path how these uh communities came to exist here and what was their trajectory through the area Alberto uh he had been living there for 30 years he told me that the community that I was uh walking through was actually three times its size but through different uh Renovations they started selling some of the land and then constructing stores and residents on the other place he was not completely sure where he was going to move to but he understood early on that the apartments that were going to replace the community were not going to be for him and he also shared that he couldn't really move the his house the trailer with a crane because the cost of the crane was exceeding the price of the trailer it was 2016 I live close uh to this community doesn't exist anymore it was called West Dixie Court I read this article that is still online that talks about this investor purchasing the land and eventually evicting everybody I felt kind of outraged confused frustrated I grab a video camera not really understanding what role did I play on all this but I just went there trying to see what was going on and documented in one way or another so I roam through the streets ly I was very shy I didn't speak with anybody but understanding that there was something behind this that this was not an isolated incident this was kind of a trend that was going on it kind of got me in this trajectory of understanding that there were many other Communities going through the exact same uh faith and the irony of all this that land is still empty so they have kicked everybody but they haven't done anything with it so that got me thinking about we have already Norm normaliz the situation to the point that nobody really cares and I kind of took it upon myself to go to these places to document something that was uh going away that I felt it was historic you might see on the new cycle but then it will be gone and nobody will remember these people and they will be completely forgotten it was interesting to see the differences between the senior residents that have been living there for a long time versus the young people some of them immigrants that just moved there a few months ago and they had no attachments with the community so the older generation didn't have so much time left in order to re uh discover another place for them to to move to where the young ones could be there today and somewhere else tomorrow I documented in a lot of 50 55 plus in Senior Communities so these people were living in Social Security checks and and disability checks one of the images that we have here in the exhibition is also on the book it's uh from Gloria Gloria relocated to South Florida from New York and she bought this trailer at this Penbrook Pines Community and then a year in uh since she moved uh she discovered that the park was being evicted after she had spent a lot of money fixing the trailer and making it comfortable so it was very sad for me to see that and and and feel powerless that it didn't have any way of helping her other than take her portrait and include it into in this is this um work because uh she started developing health conditions she started developing an arhythmia because of the anxiety that the whole situation was producing her photographers we have this issue about capturing somebody's image and the privacy and the the power dynamics that happens when you put the camera how many decisions are you taking in order to take this photo how are you're portraying your subject what I try to do is try to do it with as much dignity and a very careful consideration so they could be experienced by other people the same way that I want them to experience it when the sky is evenly Le lit on a cloudy day the colors look completely different and that kind of allowed me to enhance like the the uniqueness of each one of these trailers because the are paint in different colors that you will not necessarily expect yet in a very Miami way and also that they decorations right from the ornaments from the garden gnomes to the flamingos all those added to the identity and belonging of those and it told a completely different story of Miami right and that was the whole point it's not this idic summer paradise it was something else and it kind of created A disruption because of the the contrast the colors and the subject matter that was in front of the audience it became important to understand how these communities were enticing people to move and relocate to the area this is a perfect example quality living at modest cost in Florida you see the idea of affordable housing was even back then a drawn to all these people that were coming to the state during the 80s with high inflation rates a lot of people have decided to go to mobile uh trailers instead of buying a house because it was more affordable so these stories are not new for South Florida I think what's new is the fact that the entire area is becoming unaffordable for so many and the cost of living is pushing a lot of people out of the area initially this was not meant to be a book many years later I kind of make a connection between me my upbring the stories of displacement that I heard from my grandparents growing up in Argentina that immigrated from Poland in the Ukraine and then I saw myself here looking at a displacement of a different Community because of economic reasons I realized that what better way to do it than doing it with a book very individual way of discovering this without necessity of a gallery right Gallery shows come and go on a monthly basis but the book stays with you for a long time this becomes a conversation with somebody in the future uh that maybe the next Generation can discover these communities that used to be here through these images that in a way are creating kind of an archive of the stories and the people that lived in South Florida in these trailer parks 211 is a free confidential helpline that helps connect residents to a wide range of needs from housing to food assistance and Crisis Intervention here now to share resources to assist our older population is Billy Morgan senior director of community engagement for 211 Broward Billy thank you so much for being here today such a pleasure to be here thanks for having us 211 is such a critical service tell us how it works well 211 is the number to call when you don't know the number to call I often say um it's a place that you can access resources get support it's a 24-hour helpline we speak all languages as well so we can help anybody in our community access care find where they need to go it's that place where you can find hope when you don't know where to go and our counselors are so highly trained and professional that we can help that individual find and navigate this complex system sometimes that is our community of Social Services and kind of help line up those resources the best thing also is that we follow up as well to help and ensure that care was given that's beautiful and right now as you're getting these calls coming in what are some of the most pressing issues in Broward County from Seniors about housing from Seniors we're seeing a lot of need right now for housing as you might expect basic needs as well we're seeing a high increase of needs for um food shelter light bill rent you know the the need is great out there and those calls continue to rise those calls continue to be received at our heline which we're there to be able to help that person access those resources and those caregivers as well for anybody who needs support you the seniors are struggling right now um between affordable housing risking homelessness you're seeing an up ticking calls what are you prepared to do for folks who call in the first part of it is to ensure that uh we assess what their needs are so we want to make sure that that individual does uh have and have access to the help that we're able to provide so what they do is when they call us um we're going to just start the conversation we're going to connect with that individual and a name exchange is something as simple as that just to really humanize and talk with that person and get to know that individual to let them know it's okay because it's not always easy asking for help and it's not always easy to know where to go but we're really hoping that we can raise awareness about this resource that's been around for over 30 years in our community to be able to just let people know hey when you don't know where to go call us that connection happens and then we start to explore how we can help and what the needs are sometimes the need starts with anxiety I have a late bill I don't know what to do I don't know where to go and then um we follow through with giving details about some resources that might be helpful for that senior we that's why we might ask about your age because if you're over 65 versus a person over 55 or if you're in your 80s you might be a veteran you might be a first responder it depends on the needs every call is kind of unique that way and there's so many more doors that we can open to access so many resources out there for our seniors from housing to food pantry is just for seniors um our program for seniors who live alone so starts with a connection absolutely and you also have a free uh what is it a checkup call service where it's like not just your basic necessities that they're getting help but actually someone on the other line who cares about how they're doing since they've called tell us more about that it's such a wonderful program it's called touchline in Broward and uh we also have it in Palm Beach our 211 and our partners in uh Miami as well so anywhere you are when you're di 211 you can ask for that program for a daily reassurance call for a senior who lives alone our program particularly serves individuals who live alone in Brower County who are 55 and older okay and um what we do is just give give a check up you know we just might call um depending on how often they want to call they can we can call them every day and our specialist and we'll just reach out to them and just connect with them we save lives with that program um on a routine basis we might call if that person doesn't pick up what we might do is provide they are providing with us uh their uh emergency contacts maybe a neighbor a family member that lives nearby and then we contact them so we have a routine where if we don't reach them and after a certain period of time we're going to contact we have Partnerships with the police departments to be able to do a welfare check and just check in on that senior we've saved lives with that program and I know other 211s as well when a person has fallen and can't get up and we're here to be able to just provide that extra Assurance to say hey we're going to check on you or just be that voice or that person to just connect with in the mornings you have a big job with two11 you don't just help seniors and so in order to get all this accomplished I'm sure you do partner with other local agencies and for resources tell us about that right we're a nonprofit and 211 wears so many hats uh we're not just also Helping Seniors we're helping caregivers we're helping parents of children with special needs we have uh programs for First Responders we have programs for almost all walks of life so that assessment is really important to see where we can help and how much we can help because there is a very out of resources out there that our community might not know about so um even if you're not sure if there's help out there from transportation to food to uh basic needs to beyond for a person in crisis as well you don't know how to help somebody or you might be struggling yourself with a mental health need we're there and we're capable and highly trained to be able to assess that need and get that person the help that they might need so many hats absolutely and maybe to encourage someone to call do you have a success story off the top of your head you know know I was thinking of a uh one of our touch liners we call them touch liners um and uh recently um we had uh one of our beloved touch lines we have we call hundreds of people actually uh through that program and most recently I was thinking of um one of our uh touch liners we call every morning she always picks up the phone she consistently picks up the phone when we call the first time which is great and so but the phone rang she didn't answer well okay that can happen she have you know ran outside to get the mail so we give it another try and by the third time the the alarm start to sound now this isn't typical for for our our one of our uh clients yeah so um so at that point we've left our messages then we contacted her neighbor and said we're concerned she hasn't picked up Canen you and with her permission you know with Canen you and she had a key to the house so she was able to go over and she found she had fallen in the night oh wow she's fine but the fact that she had fallen she was crying for help but nobody could hear her and so when she heard the phone ringing she knew that somebody was going to be sent to her house to be able to check with her so even that ringing even though she couldn't get access to the phone that was ringing she knew that somebody's going to be knocking on her door and checking on her and that's the beauty of touchline and that's the beauty of these Senior Services these daily reassurance calls is that they save lives so that's one of my one of the many success stories and we have so many so important what advice would you give to seniors struggling it today with the housing crisis now with the struggle with our housing situation um we're seeing these calls consistently at 211 um it's important to address the emotional stress as well um and then explore what's out there um we have dozens of agencies that are always there and available to help our seniors um so we'll link them up to them and we don't want to overwhelm them with too much information so we might give them a few to start with encourage uh that senior to call back so we can explore some more resources or we'll give them a call back to check in and see how those worked out and so um we start there um and the other thing about it is um we hear that need for housing we hear that need for for just beyond that is meeting the needs for food and there's senior food pantries as well we can uh link up our callers too as well so there's things just beyond housing but housing is such a great need for right now in our community that it's really our top priority to be able to give those callers those needs in addition sometimes there isn't a need out there that we can meet and that's really tough and we have to give that bad news or that tough news and we will keep exploring and keep trying to find a resource to help that individual and um what we can do is help with many other needs but what's important is that we document that unmet need and let our funders as a nonprofit let our funders and our community know that this need need is not met or this need has exceeded what is available in our community so data is really important for what we do as well W it's just three digits 211 you can help you know as a caregiver or someone who needs the help just give you guys a call that's right we are 24 hours a day seven days a week a billy thank you so much for being here oh it's such a pleasure thank you for more on these and other resources in your community follow us on Facebook aty southl I'm Arlene Borstein thanks for watching for more stories about your South Florida community and local resources like subscribe and click the video below