Clark County’s commissioners are recruiting volunteers for their new Aging Readiness Task Force.
o To apply, write a letter explaining the challenges facing the county’s aging population and send it with a resume by 5 p.m. March 19 to Jennifer Clark, Board of Clark County Commissioners, P.O. Box 5000, Vancouver, WA 98666. Or fax the information to 360-397-6058 or e-mail jennifer.clark@clark.wa.gov.
o For more information, call 360-397-2280,
ext. 4913.
A “silver tsunami” of retiring Baby Boomers is poised to wash over the United States, and some say Clark County isn’t ready.
The county is short on ground-floor bedrooms, roll-in bathrooms, high-quality small homes and neighborhoods built for walking, aging experts say.
To fill the gap, they think the private sector needs some sort of nudge from local government — or that government needs to eliminate barriers that its codes, fees and habits have inadvertently created.
Clark County's commissioners are recruiting volunteers for their new Aging Readiness Task Force.
o To apply, write a letter explaining the challenges facing the county's aging population and send it with a resume by 5 p.m. March 19 to Jennifer Clark, Board of Clark County Commissioners, P.O. Box 5000, Vancouver, WA 98666. Or fax the information to 360-397-6058 or e-mail jennifer.clark@clark.wa.gov.
o For more information, call 360-397-2280,
ext. 4913.
“We’ve got to decide what we’re doing about this. It’s looming,” said David Kelly, executive director of the Vancouver-based Southwest Washington Agency on Aging and Disabilities, who likes the “tsunami” label. “A looming opportunity and a looming challenge.”
For Dexter Garey of east Vancouver’s senior-friendly Fairway Village development, both challenge and opportunity are as clear as the “for sale” signs that vanish from his neighbors’ homes a few weeks after they appear.
“Places don’t stay for sale very long in here, because of the onslaught of 55 and older people,” said Garey, a retired building industry executive, leaning over his golf clubs at the end of the ninth hole on Fairway Village’s golf course. “They moved here for a reason, and they’re staying here for a reason.”
With the state Office of Financial Management expecting Clark County’s population of people older than 60 to double to 127,000 in the next 15 years, Kelly and other leaders say entrepreneurs will soon be rushing to serve “the healthiest, most educated, most skilled and most affluent generation in history” as it retires. County Commissioner Marc Boldt has signed on, too, pushing for the county to create a new citizens’ commission to think of ways the local government can help push things along.
The application deadline is Friday. To apply, see the box on page.
Small-home surge
For years, small houses in Clark County have largely been built for poor people: two bedrooms, cheap materials, no frills.
That’s about to change, Vancouver development attorney James Howsley predicted last week. Small houses, he thinks, will increasingly be built for old people.
“We are really going to go through a sea change here, I think, because of the aging population,” said Howsley, who has been researching local demographic trends.
Howsley said a former client had bought land for a planned community of 1,500 to 2,000-square-foot ranch homes in Clark County several years ago.
The small, high-end homes had been expected to sell for $300,000 to $500,000 each, Howsley said.
“I think they saw a niche in the market to create something that people who were older than 55 wanted,” Howsley said.
The market collapsed and the plan fell through. Howsley thinks the niche is still waiting.
To give developers more reasons to fill it, he said, the county should consider cutting park and school impact fees for new homes whose residents wouldn’t use parks or schools much.
“You would place an age restriction in there,” Howsley said.
Or a so-called “cottage ordinance” might encourage developers to build small, one-story houses with shared carports on lots of 3,500 to 4,000 square feet.
Hopefully, Howsley said, small commercial areas would be within walking distance.
Accessibility needed
When it comes to senior-friendly housing, size isn’t the only thing that matters, said Lori Homola of Yacolt.
Eventually, seniors also need wheelchair-accessible bathrooms and showers, ramps at the doorways and lots of handrails.
Many people don’t give such features a second thought until it’s too late, Homola said — and when a hip fractures or a back gives out, people are forced to leave their homes before they want to.
“The elderly want to always stay in their home,” Homola said. “There’s a lot of elderly right now that are staying in their home in kind of dangerous conditions, not because people don’t care but because it’s their home, and they want to be in their home.”
Homola spent a few years working with North Country Emergency Medical Services to install such features.
“A paramedic and I would go into homes,” Homola said. “It was very easy to just have different things put in.”
Homola now co-owns Superior Care for Seniors, a firm that helps place seniors in assisted-living and nursing homes. She worries, too, about a shortage of young people willing to care for their elders.
But can a local government help solve any of these problems?
Howsley thinks so. Homola isn’t sure.
But Garey, the Fairway Village retiree, doubts the county can make a difference even if it tries.
“It’ll never work,” he said. “Government is famous for not having the slightest idea where the market is going.”
Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or michael.andersen@columbian.com.
