LOW-INCOME SENIORS ARE HIT HARD BY PANDEMIC
With no place to go, many spend days in their room with little contact
Evelyn Rogers loved going to the Potiker Family Senior Residence in downtown San Diego to join a friend in a signing group, do arts and crafts, work on a computer and socialize with others.
“You could stay for hours and play videos or play the piano,” recalled Rogers, 60. “But we’re not allowed to do anything anymore. We can’t have fun with other people.”
The Potiker Family Senior Residence and the Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center, both operated by the nonprofit Serving Seniors, discontinued their inperson classes and activities in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul Downey, president and
CEO of Serving Seniors, said the move was made to protect the health of the clients they serve. But it also came with a cost.
“Aside from, obviously, the health implications of catching
COVID, the single biggest impact of this is the social isolation,” he said. “On a typical day at the wellness center, we’d have 500 and 600 people come through. They could do travel classes, tai chi, yoga, chair aerobics, go to the cyber cafe, a singing group or do art projects.”
That all ended in March. Now, a room that once saw the same friends meeting daily for meals is used for packing food into boxes for delivery, a service that grew from 60,000 deliveries a month to 220,000 to help seniors who are shut in.
For some, the quick handoff of the package meals five days a week is one of the only interactions they have with another person.
“There’s no much to do, due to the COVID,” Rogers said. “Just stay home and wait for my food.”
In response to the isolation many seniors are experiencing, Serving Seniors has created Connections, a program where volunteers call home-bound seniors three days a week to chat and check up on them.
The nonprofit isn’t alone in recognizing the plight of many seniors during the pandemic. The