How does a senior service agency get into the work of housing without building its own complex?  Silver Key in Colorado Springs, Colorado spent months doing listening sessions to find out where the gaps were for older adults and housing.  Once they started to pick up on trends they crafted a new position within their organization that supports their case managers and collaborates on a broad community basis to serve older adults in new ways.

Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country.  We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado.  The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer.  Learn more at Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging.

Transcript:

Michaela Nichols:

Hello and thank you for listening to Aging with Altitude, a podcast series about how we rise above the day-to-day issues that surround aging. This series is sponsored by the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. Today's episode is about housing. My name is Michaela Nichols and I'm here with Dayton Romero and Erin McNabb. Mr. Romero is the director of senior assistant programs at Silver Key Senior Services, which is a nonprofit that provides services to the senior community in El Paso County. He's been with Silver Key since July of 2015. Miss McNabb has been with Silver Keys since February, solely working in the housing navigation program. The program was created in March 2019 to help seniors looking for housing in the area.

Can you all explain a little bit about what the housing navigation program does?

Dayton Romero:

Yeah, the housing navigation program came to its fruition whenever we held a focus group as part of the Age Friendly Colorado Springs Initiative. Our case management group specifically was asked to hold this focus group to kind of have a discussion on some of the different things we were observing anecdotally across our clients, and also data wise. What we found is that there was a gap in our community specifically among seniors who were running into challenges. When they were looking for an alternative place whether it be downsizing or their rent at their current place increasing, and so we found that the extent of services offered to these individuals was to provide them a housing list that may be outdated as soon as it prints out from the Internet. And so we found a big need for a dedicated position and role, and a program to be able to provide a comprehensive navigation service for individuals. That ranges from being able to identify their preferences, their barriers and really putting them in a position where they are most likely able to find a place where they'll be able to thrive and be independent.

Erin McNabb:

Part of that is educating people on the changes in the housing market since the last time they were looking at housing; changes and how technology has affected how people search for housing; changes in how landlords are looking for tenants due to the lack of housing in our community as the increased rents and increased barriers. It's definitely a landlord’s market versus a renter's market. I spent a lot of time educating people on what barriers landlord’s do put in place as eligibility criteria for people to get into properties, also how to search. People often don't understand the best ways to search for housing anymore or they don't have access to the Internet and that's where you have to go. Facebook marketplace and groups are huge places where people are posting available rentals; difference between private landlords and property managers and different expectations, different barriers people put between the two groups. I spent a lot of time educating on how to search and when I do, measure those barriers and preferences that the client themselves has, talk to them about how to mitigate those to make themselves more desirable to potential landlords. A lot of it is education as well as helping them with the search themselves, and helping to identify units that will fit their needs and helping advocate on their behalf.

Michaela Nichols:

Older adults often rely on a fixed income such as Social Security or retirement funds for their living expenses, this can put some seniors, like you said, in challenging situations when their rent is increased or they need to downsize their homes. Can you give us a few examples of situations that arise regularly and explain how you would approach those specific situations?

Erin McNabb:

Some of the biggest barriers I see are of course income in general. Landlords often times are requiring you have two and a half to three times the rent in income. That becomes a large barrier for people who are on fixed incomes especially the people who are on the lower end of the spectrum for fixed incomes because oftentimes rents are above their income in general. That becomes one of the biggest barriers. Other barriers are credit. Landlords are often requiring credit scores of at least 600. And surprisingly, although not to those who are looking, animals are one of the biggest barriers. Most landlords are not allowing animals at all in their units anymore and so animals become one of the biggest barriers we deal with because a lot of people do view animals as part of their family. It's not something they're willing to give up, but landlords aren't accepting them and that becomes a very hard choice for people to make; and also prolongs the process of finding a place. We see those oftentimes all three in one situation and it's that constant search to figure out where can we go and who can we find that might be willing to work with people. That also ends up oftentimes being “we want double or triple deposit but will work with you” and that becomes another problem because who has those funds? So we have to help look elsewhere to see if we can find those funds within the community to help people get in.

Dayton Romero:

And I could add to that Michaela. In the scope of income, in that lens, is a lot of our clients who come through our door seeking assistance around housing are relying on their Social Security income. We've seen a lot prevalently where one single event could really put someone in a downward spiral. Whether it be a medical event, a loss of a spouse or even a car repair could put someone in a position where they're going to be on the street, or they won't have enough to make ends meet to make that rent payment. Those are the situations that will actually come bring the client into our door and we’re able to really look at the client holistically and identify what supportive services we could put in place in addition to meeting that imminent need of preventing them from becoming evicted or what other supports can be put in place so that they are able to be self-sufficient and independent. Some other barriers that have come up quite a bit where we've seen have caused problems is transportation. Again, really navigating our housing market here specifically it takes quite a bit of coordination. There's a dignity aspect to things as well so whenever, say you're looking for an apartment online, and you find an apartment that you know is on the 1st floor, it looks like it will meet all your needs and you reach out to the person; you schedule an appointment, but you don't have a vehicle. Or you don't know how to navigate our bus system, or you don't have enough resources to buy a bus pass, and other transportation services you have to wait two weeks out. By the time they are able to get to that place to view and even sign a lease or so on, someone’s put it deposit on it. It really is a big barrier in terms of being competitive where things are moving so quickly. Then the third that comes to mind is those who are suffering from mental health ailments or are chronically disabled. These two things kind of compound those already existing barriers like transportation. Those who are having difficulty presenting appropriately in front of property managers. Like Erin said, being presentable and being marketable too as a tenant to property managers on where you have the composure to be able to kind of work through the logistics and come upon an agreement in terms of what your lease will look like and that sort of thing.

Michaela Nichols:

Do you have a success story that you could tell us about?

Erin McNabb:

I actually just got a gentleman. He is going to be moving into his place within the next week or so. He is someone who needed extra support around him and found his place rather quickly. I started working with him less than a month ago. He had the support of neighbors and friends. He had the support of his pastor at his church. All of them came around him to help with the process and I would supply listings to them. They helped him with going and looking at places and talking to people and getting in place. That is what so many of our seniors are lacking, but that was a huge success because he had the support network to help him make progress and make progress quickly. Then we’re coming in and helping him with his first month’s rent to get him into his place because in his case he does have to pay double deposit. We're going to be helping him with first month rent to make sure that he secures housing. He is someone who has to leave his place because his unit is being sold. His property is being sold and he has nowhere to go. Those are what we usually find is the biggest success stories. People who have those support networks, but we also know that we have a lot of seniors who don't have the support networks. That's very much where I come in. That's very much where we try to wrap around them with our support services, through our case management programs, through our food pantry, through our connection cafes so that they have those support networks and extra resources to be able to navigate this process and have people who can help them along the way.

Dayton Romero:

May I? I love success stories. One recently is, I’ll preface it with just kind of the collaboration that goes on in our community that everyone kind of rallying around specific situations. Recently we had a tragedy in our community where over 100 people were displaced, older adults. Silver Key really stepped in as an entity that would be there to support those seniors who were looking for alternative permanent housing placement. We were able to help those clients from the shelter where they were evacuated to, to securing housing. This took multiple people to kind of get that in place, but as I had said the duality of services, with errands services as a housing navigator and locating, identifying those preferences and barriers, doing that real holistic assessment in our case management team. Those two services really put a person in a position where they are able to really thrive. That's our goal is to make sure that they are self-sufficient, and they feel empowered to move forward. Part of that is again, really identifying not only what the resources are needed to move into the place, but also what assistance benefits are they eligible for? What are those other factors that we could really plug in with or get them connected to whenever we do collaborate with other partners in the community? We did have a gentleman who went to the shelter, was displaced as a result of a fire, and used the shelter to its very last day. We were able to help him get into a place. It was crunch time and we got him in there. At the same time, he is secured. He's safe and he is continuing other services that we offer through Silver Key like our transportation, our food pantry. He'll continue to stay engaged with us and so we will be able to continue to support him.

Michaela Nichols:

In your experience, I know the programs only been going on for a few months, but have people typically been connected with you and then continue to use other services through Silver Key?

Erin McNabb:

Absolutely. Often times the people that are connected to me, and in many cases they’re already clients of Silver Key who have utilized either case management or the food pantry or transportation or any of the other myriad of services that we provide, who have found themselves in a position where they need assistance with navigating finding housing and then are referred to me. They continue to use the other resources even after I have assisted them with finding housing or staying within their current housing. In other cases, it's people that are now referred to us because of the new program with help in locating housing and have never utilized our services before. Through working with me, and you know I do those holistic assessments on their barriers their preferences. I measure their health needs. I measure their nutrition needs. I measure all the social determinants of health. I can connect them to the other resources within Silver Key, and within the community that meet those needs. Oftentimes they may be coming to us for housing, but they're realizing oh wow, Silver Key has all of these other services that are going to help me continue to be stable and continue to be sustainable moving forward. Then they know that if they need additional assistance down the road that they have a case management program at Silver Key that they can come to who can help them navigate their needs as their needs increase.

Dayton Romero:

Well put. I would add is Silver Key’s reach is pretty far and wide in our community. We have the privilege to serve near 7,000 clients annually, and that that's across all of our programs. We have near 600 volunteers, and we look to those across the departments to be the eyes and ears to identify these clients who may be struggling or having challenges. Whether it be it just a conversation being had in a bus when they're being transported to their doctor’s appointment, that volunteer or that staff driver is equipped to be able to get that person connected to the appropriate place internally at Silver Key so that we are able to help out and get those supports in place. I must add again, to the collaboration piece we're big collaborators, we love our partners and we definitely try to stay within our our expertise, but but one thing that we've noticed, and this is a little bit outside of the question, but just to get it in there. We recently, upon the launch of this program, we really took our time with it, you know. It's young. It's five months right now however, kind of the model that within the framework that we've developed is really innovative in that it addresses some gaps that we've noticed across other providers. Again to that collaborative piece, we've actually sat down with these other partners and really evaluated what they're doing. We kind of picked and chose some different things we could integrate within our framework and concept that will help us be successful whenever we are providing this service. Another cool thing, being a partner with the Area Agency on Aging and getting Older American Act dollars, is that we serve those 60 and over. We do have some real flexibility in terms of the individuals who we are able to serve. It's not a real rigid sort of guideline of hey you have to be this, this and this across our programs. However, we did get on with the city. What I mean is we are now a contractor with the city to be able to assist those who fall on a specific sort of percentage on the federal poverty guideline scale. We're sitting in with the Coordinated Entry efforts which is kind of a mechanism that the community has put together to identify chronically homeless individuals and get them housed through a really rigorous process. A process that really places a lot of importance on quality, I must say. The Pikes Peak Continuum of Care actually administers that and overseas it. They actually do our our point in time survey annually which is a survey, a collective effort amongst the community that gets a hard count amongst the homeless individuals so that we have an idea where we're at in terms of homelessness. What we noticed for a while there is that those who were older adults, 60 and over, were a little underrepresented in terms of providers for them. We've been really kind of keeping our eye and keeping our fingers on the pulse in terms of what are those numbers doing across older adults who are experiencing homelessness. That's why we thought it would be imperative that we get in and sit at this table at the Coordinated Entry so that we are that safety net for older adults who are experiencing homelessness. Erin actually pulled some numbers for us that show a pretty significant increase over the past three years in homelessness amongst older adults 60 and over.

Michaela Nichols:

Do you want to share some of those numbers?

Erin McNabb:

Through the Coordinated Entry meeting administered by the COC, the Continuum of Care, we were recently shown some numbers based on how many people of which age group were on the Coordinated Entry by name list, which is a list of people who have completed a housing assessment. These people are currently homeless or at risk of homelessness, although usually literally homeless or chronically homeless. In the age ranges that we serve, so we're talking 60 and over, in 2017 there were 54 people in July on the by names list from the ages of 60 to 69. In 2018 there were 78 people from the ages of 60 to 69 and in 2019, so this July, there were 83 people on the list. We've seen this small increase from ages 70 to 79. There were eight people on the list in 2017, five people on the list in 2018, and there are now 14 people on the list between the ages of 70 and 79. There is currently one person on the list who is over 80 years old. The biggest jump we've actually seen which has massive implications for where things are going in the future, is the ages 50 to 59. We’re talking those younger baby boomers that are about to enter those 60 plus years. In 2017 there were 169 people on the list in July. In 2018 or 172. 2019, there were 240 people, almost a 100 person jump in the ages of 50 to 59. Those are the people that within the next few years are going to be the clients that Silver Key serves. There's this massive jump of people who are now experiencing homelessness due to the increase in rents, hitting that fixed income age range, and all sorts of other life events that happened such as the death of a spouse or disability or whatever it may be in their life that has now put them in a place where their income has lowered. These are all people that are going to be entering our system in need of finding housing, specifically affordable housing. They're going to need help navigating the processes because it becomes more challenging every day.

Michaela Nichols:

Do you see the housing issues in our community worsening or getting better?

Erin McNabb:

I think that the housing issues in our community are, there are city, the county, the state, all of the agencies in our community, the Continuum of Care we're all working very very hard to address the housing shortage because of course you know demand controls the market. Rents are higher because we have more demand than we have housing. Everybody in town who deals with housing, who works with people who are living in poverty, everybody is doing...