#ProAging: Which US Cities Offer The Best Lifestyle To Their Older Citizens?
Dave Letterman offers only a “Top 10″ list, but Bankers Life and Casualty has just published its Top 50 “Best US Cities For Seniors 2011″ and the list contains a few surprises – though, admittedly, not so many laughs.
The list was drawn up with an effort to establish some stable criteria that were, in turn, weighted to reflect the importance of each issue with older Americans. For example, healthcare opportunities are weighted to 10 at the top of the scale, whereas housing was weighted at 5, because many kinds of housing arrangements can be made for many kinds of seniors, whereas healthcare is a priority for all older people.
The good side about a weighted standard is that readers can judge for themselves if a certain concern outweighs other issues. For example, the city noted as having the lowest crime and the safest urban environment for seniors is Nassau-Suffolk County, New York (Long Island), yet the area did not quite crack the top 10. But if security/low crime is most important for you, you now know where to retire.
Popularity: 6% | Category Affordable Housing, Aging, Boomers, Community, Environment, Health, Healthcare, Healthcare, Independent Living, Marketing, Report, Resource, Retirement Living, Seniors Life, Wellness | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#Philanthropy: How to Find and Solicit the Biggest Corporate Donors
In the midst of the present economic crisis, the debate about whether corporations should have social responsibility to give to philanthropic causes has grown heated. Some argue that CR (Corporate Responsibility) departments actually diffuse problems rather than solve them and corporations should put their resources to better, profit-driven, uses for the betterment of all. Others counter that without a role for institutionalized CR, innovation and economic dynamism are often replaced with market suppression and cronyism.
But the present fact is a number of corporations give a good deal of financial and/or goods-in-kind support for social causes (broadly defined). A list of the top 50 (as of July 2011) can be found at The Foundation Center‘s website. What are some of the ways they give? And how might your organization benefit from their philanthropic programs? Over the next few weeks, we’ll present some of the research pursued to see what can be learned about a number of these 50 programs.
We begin with the top 5.
Popularity: 4% | Category Affordable Housing, Banking & Finance, Community, Environment, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Greening, Health, Healthcare, Low-Income, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Resource, Revitalization | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#Aging: Is The Job Part-Time, Or The Retirement?
Click on Carol Simpson's Cartoon To Purchase A Copy
Whatever political position you hold on the TARP of George W. Bush or the bailout of General Motors carried out under Barack Obama, the fact is, a great deal of money, not wealth, was pushed into the economy. ‘Inflation‘ is the result of putting in more money into an economy than the economy is worth: as dollars are pumped in that to do not reflect the perceived value of the market, each person will demand more of those cheap, common, dollars for his or her goods and services.
No one is hurt more by inflation than those on a fixed income that does not respond with the economy; Namely, the retired. When a retiree’s Social Security Check check arrives in the mail, the note on the check might be for $100 (to keep my brain clear with simple round numbers), but the groceries that used to cost $100 might cost $110 with 10% inflation. Those in the labor force can work an extra hour or two to make up the difference. Those who are retired (or unemployed), are stuck $10 short a month. How will they cover the shortfall?
Popularity: 4% | Category Affordable Housing, Aging, Community, Independent Living, Low-Income, News and Current Affairs, Newspaper Article, Report, Resource, Retirement Living, Seniors Life | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#Sustainability: Keeping Families In Homes Keeps Neighborhoods Alive
Bernell Grier, CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of NYC
We welcome Bernell Grier, CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, Inc. to the growing list of Contributors to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit Blog. Ms. Grier was appointed CEO in May of last year, having been COO of the housing organization since 2004. She is writing about proposed cuts in government funding to community-development programs.
Each day Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City and its affiliated Neighborhood Offices (NHSNYC) assist homeowners that are facing the potential loss of their homes through foreclosure. Government, at every level, has been the primary funder for many of the foreclosure prevention and intervention programs over the past three years.
Now, despite the fact that the foreclosure crisis continues, government funding that has been effective is threatened to be completely cut at the federal, state, and local level.
Popularity: 4% | Category Advocacy, Affordable Housing, Banking & Finance, Civics, Community, Low-Income, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Nonprofit, Opinion, Politics | | 0 Comments
Written by: Bernell Grier
#ProAging: Federal Budget Cuts Senior Housing & Programs
The fierce debates about the federal deficit, its origins, and how (quickly) to pay it down have affected almost every sector of the US population. The short-term problem of a government shut-down seems to have been pushed down the calendar by a couple of weeks, but only by pressing a host of cuts to the short-term/hold-over budget of Fiscal Year 2010-11.
Even some conservative pundits are unhappy with the proposed cuts, and the outcry has only grown as details about cutting programs for older Americans come to light.
Popularity: 8% | Category Affordable Housing, Aging, Community, Low-Income, National/International, Politics | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
Top Ten Senior Housing Trends For 2011
Senior Housing News published their long-awaited report of housing trends in the senior housing market a couple of days ago.
An underlying trend highlighted by the report suggests that “value” is near the top of everybody’s list — developers, facilities managers, and potential residents alike.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the report’s main focus areas:
- Economics 101 – Supply Decreases, Demand Increases….News Flash: Prices will go up for Independent Living, Assisted Living and Nursing Care
- 3 – R’s of Senior Housing – Rehab, Renovate, Repurpose
- Technology – Monitoring Networks, Apps, Devices and Systems Integrator
- Campus Extensions and Home Healthcare
- Finance & Capital Markets – Chicken or the Egg
- Government -Healthcare & Entitlement Reform
- Home Prices – Lending Constraints and Mortgage Interest Deduction
- Local is Cool – Local, Face-to-face social networks make a comebackArchitecture & Design
- Go Long Grannie Stocks
Visit the Senior Housing News website to read the report in it’s entirety.
Popularity: 5% | Category Adult Kids, Affordable Housing, Aging, Assisted Living, Community, Independent Living, Nonprofit, Report, Resource, Retirement Living, Seniors Life | | Comments Off
Written by: Marco Kathuria
HAMP, or ‘Extend and Pretend,’ Continues To Hurt Troubled Mortgage Holders
We drew up a report about the Obama Administration’s ‘Home Affordable Modifications Program‘ (HAMP) in early August this year, in which we looked at news stories and even the government’s own figures that demonstrated the slow start, and middle stretch, the program was having. The program was meant to offer those who were behind on payments, but with a history of good-faith compliance on their mortgage, a chance to have a three-month trial period of a notably reduced mortgage payment. If/when that period was successfully completed, the mortgage owner would receive a refinanced mortgage with lower monthly payments for up to five years.
An economic quarter later, and the news for homeowners is still not good. Economists are poking holes in the program, and – unlike in August – the knives of political opposition have been sharpened as well.
Popularity: 2% | Category Affordable Housing, Banking & Finance, Conference/Congress, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Opinion, Politics | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner
Meta-Debate About Mega-Cities (Or Not) Of The Future
Yesterday we posted news concerning two multi-family buildings opened or in development in Washington DC and Baltimore. These projects, initiated and funded by a bipartisan association of private- and public-sector institutions, are also meeting the gold standard of LEED Certification of environmental stewardship. The project in Washington DC represents a new model of Section 8 housing that has appeared over the last decade or so – a model that encourages the participation and investment of residents inside and around the building to make the community a success (See also our Perspectives interview with Andrew Vincent and Allison Pendell-Jones with the Baltimore AHC). The one in Baltimore is a broader community project meant to encourage an ethnically and economically mixed community in an environment meant to draw on the conveniences of urban living while retaining the space and modern amenities associated with the suburbs. Today we wanted to call attention to a larger debate about how housing, urban populations, and suburban communities might evolve over the next couple of decades as we recover from the Great Recession. How might we live then?
Popularity: 1% | Category Affordable Housing, Community, Greening, Opinion, Revitalization | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner
Baltimore/Washington Area Expanding Multi-Use and Green Housing
Mockup of East Baltimore Uplands Community
The housing market remains in the doldrums and the legal ramifications of the market’s bubble and collapse remain in the news. Nevertheless, the Baltimore-Washington metro region has seen an ongoing commitment from lenders, investors, and construction firms within both the private and public sectors to expand green multi-family housing. Multi-Housing News Online (MHN) has recently reported on a couple of projects that are moving toward completion, even as gloom hangs over the rest of the market.
Popularity: 1% | Category Affordable Housing, Banking & Finance, Community, Greening, Revitalization | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner
The Foreclosure Crisis: The Same, But Different
The economic news relayed via our blog this week has not been much for confidence building, and we close the week with reports of a bleak twist in the ongoing foreclosure crisis. The news of the past couple of weeks has been that reporters and most of the fifty states’ attorneys general have been pursuing the ‘robo-signing’ services‘ that have churned out foreclosure proceedings on people who might even have been in good standing. Now third-party investors are demanding that the banks they support clarify who owns which properties and who owes what amounts to whom. Turns out that the banks can not readily provide that information, as the paperwork and loans on the properties were sliced-and-diced in a process called ‘securitization.’ Some pundits see in this latest twist the undermining of some of the first principles of capitalism: private property and the legal right to register, retain, and/or resell it.
Popularity: 1% | Category Affordable Housing, Banking & Finance, News and Current Affairs | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner
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