WASHINGTON — More and more these days, when paramedics in Fairfax, Va., respond to emergency calls, they find an older person who has fallen, broken a bone or suffered a heart attack.
Meanwhile in nearby Montgomery County, Md., authorities are investigating an increasing number of elder-abuse cases and crimes targeting senior citizens. In Chicago, New York City and elsewhere, more money is being allotted to government buses that take seniors to exercise classes and social workers who help families at a loss for how to care for aging loved ones.
Rising demand for services for the elderly is taking a toll on local governments, as communities nationwide seek to accommodate a growing senior-citizen population while still tending to schools, roads, parks and other needs.
By 2030, 1 out of 5 U.S. residents — 70 million people — will be 65 or older, according to population estimates. At the same time, federal funding for senior-citizen programs has decreased by about 19 percent since 2010, to just less than $8 billion, according to the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging. It is expected to shrink further under President Donald Trump.
Policy experts say battles over spending, services and zoning will only worsen as baby boomers enter into stages of greater dependency, creating a headache for local budget officials whose constituents already feel taxed to the limit.
“If you have to build schools and you also have to add more transportation and senior centers for older adults, where does the money come from?” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who writes about tax policy and elder care. “It’s a very hard question to answer.”
In Fairfax County, Virginia’s largest and most economically powerful jurisdiction, embodies the challenge many local governments face. The two fastest-growing age groups in the county of 1.1 million are schoolchildren and people older than 65. The elderly population is expected to grow from 135,000 to 172,000 over the next eight years.
A Washington Post review of 13 agency budget reports showed that services for seniors has helped drive up spending by about $43.8 million since 2014 — nearly 10 percent of the county’s overall spending growth during that period. Some of that money went to initiatives created through the Fairfax 50-plus Community Action Plan, which focuses on transportation improvements, affordable housing and social programs to help elderly residents age in place.
At the same time, the county denied or trimmed funding requests for employee raises, police reforms and education, and voters resoundingly rejected a meals tax to generate new revenue for the fast-growing school system.
Elderly slip-and-fall cases are a huge concern as senior citizens become less mobile, said Rodney Harrell, a public policy director at AARP. That has contributed to a rising demand for assisted-living centers and nursing homes. In Fairfax and elsewhere, proposals for new or expanded facilities have sparked major zoning battles and concerns over the cost of and effect on roads, sewers and other services.
“The vast majority of people want to stay in their communities as they age, but many of those communities weren’t designed for that,” Harrell said. “We’ve spent decades, and maybe even centuries, not planning for aging and designing for aging.”
Fairfax’s Division of Adult & Aging Services, which connects elderly residents to county programs and operates a hotline for seniors and their caregivers, has increased its budget by $986,000 since 2014.
Last year, the hotline took in nearly 17,000 calls, up from 15,400 in 2013. They varied from pleas for Medicaid assistance to arranging rides to doctor’s appointments and setting up in-home care. Calls to the hotline led social workers to open 2,714 cases for adult protective services, which applies to people who are no longer able to function independently.
Karen Hannigan, the division supervisor, said the county walks a fine line in deciding whether to merely counsel a caller on how an elderly person might live more safely at home, or recommend that they move somewhere they can get health and life-care services.
