[From the Plain Dealer, Monday, October 10, 1955]

CENTER IS DEDICATED AS HAVEN IN SUNSET YEARS

Success or failure in the second 40 years of life, measured in terms of happiness, is determined more by how we use or abuse our leisure time than by any other factor, it has been said.

Certainly the over-60 people of the new Golden Age Center in the 14-story building at Cedar Apartments Extension, 2320 East 30th Street, should have successful later years.

With the dedication of the center yesterday, they take over the ground floor of the project with complete facilities for almost any sort of activity.

Hundreds tour building

Hundreds of persons toured the ground floor and other parts of the huge building before the dedication ceremonies and other hundreds made the tour after the program.

Ernest J. Bohn, director of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, said, as he turned over a symbolical key to Ralph Leavenworth, president of the board of trustees of the center:

"The significant thing of this development is that it points the way in which private enterprise and the public, working together, can bring about a joint program.

"This experiment being conducted here, we hope, will induce private enterprise to build for a higher income level. That can be brought about in the redevelopment of areas in which the city is tearing down slums. Land in those areas can be made available for private construction.

Cites future goal

"The Golden Age Center, with the experience it gains here, will then be able to serve the aged who will live in the private housing.

"Cleveland is again taking the lead in a new type of housing planning, as it did 20 years ago when the original Cedar Apartments were built-the first public housing development in the Nation."

Bohn emphasized that construction of specially designed housing facilities for the aged is becoming more important each year because, in the country's total population, the aged are a rapidly growing element due to advances in medical science.

Benefactors thanked

Leavenworth, after receiving the key from Bohn, said:

"We shall endeavor to make the program and service of this center justify to the fullest extent the confidence and foresight you have shown in making this space available to us."

He expressed thanks to the foundations which have agreed to support the center for the first 5 years. These are the Cleveland Foundation, Benjamin Rose Institute, the Louis D. Beaumont Foundation, and the Hanna Fund.

His thanks went to the Welfare Federation of Cleveland, from which the center will derive support, and to numerous individuals and organizations that helped furnish and equip the center.

Lucia Bing in charge

Lucia Bing, who recently returned from Pittsburgh, where she organized a Golden Age Center, will be in charge of volunteers for the center here.

She described the dedication of the center as "the realization of a dream" and expressed the hope that the center would prove a lighthouse of happiness for the aged.

Others who took part in the program were Galen Miller, president of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland, who congratulated the Golden Age group on its achievement, and Msgr. Frederick B. Mohan, director of Catholic Charities, who gave the prayer of dedication.

The center will be guided by a professional staff and a board of 36 noted Clevelanders. It will serve as a social center where men and women over 60 may come for companionship, recreation, creative classes and activities.

Experience of centers in other cities indicates that such programs keep old people healthier and happier and reduce attendance at hospital clinics, according to officials here.

Furniture and equipment for the center was purchased with money obtained through a small capital accounts campaign. Many Cleveland corporations, associations, and individuals contributed.

[From the Cleveland Press, Wednesday, February 29, 1956]

GOLDEN DAYS-VOLUNTEERS ARE GUIDES TO ORDERLY LIFE

By Marie Daerr

When a Cedar Apartments Extension homemaker returns, heavily laden, from a marketing expedition, she finds a courteous gentleman waiting to open the door. First-time visitors to the building have no trouble finding the apartment's display suite or the Golden Age Center's lounge.

Postman Louie Riddle finds volunteers to help him enforce his "please stand back until all the mail is in the boxes" policy.

Responsible are 35 silver-haired Extension residents who wear official Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority guide badges. And in the opinion of Miss Florence Connelly, Cedar Apartments manager, the building couldn't have a more loyal, efficient group of volunteers.

"Someone is on duty from 9 a. m. to 10 p. m.," Miss Connelly explained. "Shifts are 2 hours.

"Among the guides' duties is discouraging youngsters from coming into the building and running the elevators. Our volunteers are handling this problem beautifully."

"The children aren't any trouble, if they're approached right," commented 79-year-old Harry Felix, who wears a watch given him after he had worked 25 years for Willard Storage Battery Co.

One of Felix's colleagues and proud wearer of badge No. 1 is 70-year old Charles Jones, who likes to start his guard duties at 7 a. m., instead of the assigned hour. "I get up at 5 a. m. and make myself a cup of coffee," Jones explained. “So 1 might as well get to work."

Jones, first vice president of the Golden Age Center's council of elders, thinks that one of the most exciting aspects of his volunteer job is meeting people from all over the world.

"One day we had an international convention delegation that filled 12 buses," Jones said. "Another day, a group of Germans came to see the building."

Once a month, the guides hold a formal meeting to discuss problems, and maybe suggest a new handrail or some other improvement.

"Being a guide gives me new interest in life," said 68-year-old Fred Walter. "It's much better for me to keep my mind and body active than to sit all day in iny apartment."

Other guides are Samuel Hudson, a former race-horse trainer who was 81 on Saturday and who has so little regard for superstitions that he accepted badge 13. James Novak, 74, once a tailor, has added caring for the center's plants to his guide duties.

LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

We present a statement on housing for the aging in Los Angeles County by Susand D. Adams, AFL-CIO representative attached to welfare federation of the Los Angeles area:

"1. The committee on problems of the aging of the welfare planning council, Los Angeles region, reaffirmed its resolution approved by the welfare planning council's executive committee on March 13, 1952, that the public housing authority policy be changed which prevents single and unattached unrelated older persons from residing in Federal public housing units.

"On the basis of this, the welfare planning council has asked their committee on social legislation to support that portion of S. 2790 (introduced by Senator Sparkman et al. for the Subcommittee on Housing of the Committee on Banking and Currency) which amends the definition of families for public housing to include ** ** a single person 65 years of age or over or the residuum of a tenant family.'

"Welfare planning council studies show that there are many elderly individuals of very low income in the Los Angeles community who would be benefited greatly by such revision. Moreover, the public housing projects in Los Angeles do have some vacancies, especially in the smaller size units, which are the ones most suitable for single elderly persons of very low income.

"2. The need for housing at a reasonable cost for a segment of this older age group can be supported by the following:

"A. The recent survey, the Senior Citizen in Our Community, made in Long Beach by the Long Beach Community Welfare Council indicated that 43 percent of their single seniors (65 years of age and over) and 59 percent of their widowed seniors had cash income of less than $1,000. There are 30,000 people 65 years of age and over in Long Beach and the single individuals (single and widowed) with incomes of less than $1,000 constitute 25 percent of their total, or about 7,500 individuals.

"B. In the Long Beach survey about 10 percent of all elderly people were unhappy about their quarters. That is about 3,000 individuals (probably many of these from the single individuals with incomes under $1,000) were in this group. "C. Under California's State old-age security program (known as old-age assistance in other States), the budget of $85 includes $15 for rent. This is certainly a low figure and means the worst kind of living arrangements for those who have to live within this figure and want to maintain their own households. The vast majority of older persons want to do so. There are 115,000 such persons on old-age security in Los Angeles County and 268,000 such persons in California. About 40 percent of these have no outside income and therefore must find housing within this budget figure.

"D. The State study, Our Needy Aged, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1954, showed that 12 percent of all single persons 65 and over had incomes of under $750 a year (p. 28).

"E. The estimated total of persons 65 years of age and older in Los Angeles County is 450,000. If 10 percent of these are in the same fix as for Long Beach and the State as a whole, 45,000 persons are involved. Probably at least half of these, at a minimum, would find their living arrangements bad.

"F. The Los Angeles Association of Senior Citizens Organizations, recently formed with the help of the welfare planning council, stated in a recent meeting of the welfare planning council's committee on problems of the aging that housing for low income senior citizens was the No. 1 requirement facing older people in this area. This association is studying S. 2790 with a view to supporting the principle of low-cost and low-rent housing for low-income elderly persons."

DES MOINES, IOWA

From Des Moines, Iowa, we present the following statement by James McDonnall, AFL-CIO representative on the local Community Chest staff:

"The housing situation is bad in Des Moines. Rental housing for low income older people just doesn't exist other than care-and-keep nursing homes, county poor farm, and living with relatives.

"The population of Des Moines and Polk County is about 226,010. County relief pays rent for 1,600 families; 935 families need improved housing. We need housing for about 900 elderly people.

"In this city we have about 2,500 units that are substandard. Probably about 800 to 1,000 of these should be condemned and would be by our health department but they have no place to put the people that are now living in them.

"We have had the use of a vacated Army post that has been used for housing during and since World War II. The Federal Government is now going to close up a large portion of this Army post through its General Services Administration office in Kansas City, Mo. They plan on and have asked for bids to sell 59 of these buildings. Each of these contain 7 apartments, so a total of 413 apartments will be torn down. Every one of these apartments could be filled but about a year ago or longer the Federal Government ordered that when a tenant moved out the unit was not to be rerented.

"This housing project has been operated by the Des Moines Housing Corp. that was set up by our city to take care of the acute housing problems during war and postwar time on a year-to-year lease basis with the Federal Government. "Iowa does not have any enabling legislation that will allow Des Moines to participate in Federal housing or urban development. Very few houses are being erected here that will rent for $50 or less.

"The community services committee is joining with all other health, welfare, and Community Chest agencies in fighting to preserve these Army post housing units. We have 159 families living in the Army post at the present time.

"The figures I have quoted are from the Polk County Welfare Department, Des Moines Housing Authority (Army post) Des Moines Polk County Health Department."