AGED AND AGING IN THE UNITED STATES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1959 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON PROBLEMS OF THE AGED AND AGING, The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in the Public Museum Auditorium, Grand Rapids, Mich., Senator Patrick V. McNamara, presiding. Present: Senator McNamara. Subcommittee staff members present: Sidney Spector, staff director; Harold Sheppard, research director. Committee staff member present: Raymond Hurley, minority staff member. Senator MCNAMARA. The hearing will be in order. Since June of this year, the Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged and Aging, of which I have the honor to serve as chairman, has called upon experts, governmental officials, and representatives of national organizations for facts, advice, and recommendations to meet the needs of our older citizens. But more important to me, since the middle of October we have left the somewhat confined atmosphere of the Nation's Capital, and visited various areas of the Nation. We are determined to find out firsthand what is actually going on in the lives of some of the nearly 16 million Americans who were born before the turn of the century, 16 million older men and women who live in communities like this one all over the country. I called the Washington atmosphere "confined" because sometimes we get the feeling that in Washington there are too many individuals out of touch with the problems and needs of ordinary men and women, especially the problems and needs of people who apparently made the mistake of being born too soon. Making even a limited attack on these problems and needs has not been easy. When Congress approved a housing act with some bold new programs of housing for the elderly and for nursing home construction, it was vetoed with particular objections in the veto message to housing for the elderly. We passed a second version of that housing act with the same improvements for the aged, and again it was vetoed. I personally appeared before the Subcommittee on Housing to protest the administration's veto, and to urge passage of another bill. Finally, we did get the Housing Act passed and signed. The next battle is to appropriate the funds to carry out the programs. In the course of just the past few months, our subcommittee had made the following headway: We have listened to scores of experts in Washington; We have heard and read the testimony of dozens of national organizations; We have heard the stories of hundreds of administrators at the firing lines on local and State levels; Hundreds of older citizens have personally testified as many of you will do here today and tomorrow, I hope, about what they themselves feel has to be done to assure dignity and well-being to their lives; Thousands of people like you have attended these hearings and still more thousands have read about them and seen parts of them on TV; We have visited such places as rehabilitation centers performing miracles for the aged. We have personally inspected both good and poor nursing homes. We have talked to retired couples in public housing apartments and in homes for the aged; We have gone into roominghouses in rundown areas of the big cities and have seen the third-floor walkups inhabited by lonely men and women in their seventies and eighties, forced to sleep, eat, wash, and "live" in one small partially furnished room. A nation that prides itself about a belief in the dignity of the individual, a nation that boasts of its great productive capacity and the highest standard of living in the world, obviously cannot tolerate any longer the indignity and low standard of living of millions of its older citizens. Health, financial, and housing requirements of the elderly are the priority areas that demand attention. These hearings in Grand Rapids are the first we have held in our own State. I want to pay tribute to the goals set, and the accomplishments achieved in Michigan under the courageous leadership of Governor Williams. Just to list a few examples: The people of Michigan have witnessed a remarkable improvement in the amount of payments to recipients of old-age assistance. Great progress is being made in eliminating all arbitrary age limits in State employment and in promoting employment for all older workers. Voluntary and public organizations have been stimulated and sustained in launching local and statewide programs to improve the lives of Michigan's 600,000 senior citizens. The University of Michigan is recognized around the world for its research and service programs in the field of aging. Governor Williams and the State of Michigan have achieved national renown for leadership in State mental health programs, an area of such immediate concern to the aged and aging. You know there is no simple answer to the many problems faced by our older citizens. Solutions can be found only through interested, concerted action by voluntary and local groups right in our home communities, aided by the cooperative efforts of State and Federal Governments. The gift of age is the fortunate destiny of an ever-increasing number of Americans. We must accept the challenge to make these added years meaningful, active, productive, and happy ones. We are fortunate to have with us this morning one of my colleagues from the 86th Congress, your very fine representative, Congressman Gerald Ford. Jerry, we would like to have you come up here and sit with us. Jerry, do you have anything to add to the statement that I made? Congressman FORD. Mr. Chairman, as a representative from this congressional district, I think I should first of all and most heartily welcome you and your staff for bringing these hearings to Grand Rapids. I believe these hearings will produce very constructive results, and I am sure that as I look over the list of people scheduled to testify, and as I see the citizens who are here, in addition, I am confident that you will get a very fine presentation for the subcommittee in Grand Rapids. We are proud of the people who live in this area and I am sure that the testimony given will be very helpful to you and your committee in its deliberations in proposing legislation for the Congress to consider next year. Again I welcome you, and we are mighty glad to have you for this hearing. Senator MCNAMARA. Thank you very much. Certainly this seems to be sort of a bipartisan approach. We hope it is. Any program of the magnitude and necessity of the one we are engaged in needs the help of everyone. We are very glad to have you here, Jerry. I have a telegram from Senator Kennedy, of Massachusetts, a member of the subcommittee, who, unfortunately, could not be here today. Senator Kennedy is a most effective advocate of the needs and rights of the elderly in this country. His telegram reads as follows: Senator PAT MCNAMARA, Publiic Museum Auditorium, Grand Rapids, Mich. NOVEMBER 16, 1959. DEAR SENATOR MCNAMARA: I am sorry to say that I cannot be with you today or tomorrow for the hearings on the aged but want to praise you on the fine work you and the committee staff are doing. JOHN F. KENNEDY, Now the first witness this morning was to be the Honorable Stanley J. Davis, mayor of the city of Grand Rapids, and I see he is here. We will be very happy to have you come up to the mike here, Mr. Mayor. Glad to see you, Stan. I want you to proceed in your own manner. You seem to have a prepared statement which doesn't appear from here to be too long. Will you go right ahead. STATEMENT OF HON. STANLEY J. DAVIS, MAYOR, CITY OF GRAND RAPIDS Mayor DAVIS. Thank you, Senator. On behalf of the citizens of Grand Rapids, I want to extend to you and your committee and also to the Congressman our very best wishes and I just want you to know that we are very happy that you are here. I don't ever remember a senatorial committee appearing in Grand Rapids and I think it a signal honor for the city. We have a problem here and I am glad something is going to be done about it. Grand Rapids has a higher proportion of citizens over the age of 65 than the State of Michigan, or the United States as a whole. We have a very unique problem here. City officials everywhere in the country are faced with a vast number of problems which demand immediate attention, but cities are limited in their sources of funds. The resources available to them are not sufficient to deal with these problems adequately. The result has been that in the past 25 years cities have looked to the Federal Government for support for necessary programs. City governments have the responsibility to protect the health, welfare, and safety of their communities. This means fire departments and police departments. It means providing a safe water supply and satisfactory methods of disposing of human waste. It means moving traffic and lighting streets. There is practically no aspect of daily living which is not touched by city services. It is the duty of the city to provide protection and services to all of its citizens equally. The type and degree of service is going to depend on the needs of the community. The problem of the aging population is not one that can be ignored by local officials, any more than they can ignore any other physical problems of their communities. However, I feel that there is the danger of our looking at the problems of the aging as something apart from other needs of the community. I believe that the most satisfactory approach to dealing with the needs of our aging population lies in educating all persons concerned with municipal services to these needs. It is not sufficient for us to place the full responsibility for dealing with our older population upon the churches or upon social agencies, or upon individual city departments. The problems of the aging population cannot be prevented in the sense that we try to prevent fires and prevent crime. They cannot be disposed of in the same sense that we dispose of rubbish or other wastes. We must recognize that the aging of the population represents a total change in our society, and we must deal with it as such. To be more specific, I believe the general areas of concern which are important to our older citizens are health, housing, welfare and recreation. These categories are not different from those of our population as a whole. The major distinction is that our older citizens are sometimes less able to provide these essentials for themselves. More responsibility falls on private and public agencies to aid them. For Some of the problems in meeting those needs are beyond the resources of individual persons, agencies, and even individual governments at the local level. The matter of the aging population is one that is nationwide and not limited to individual communities. this reason, I am gratified that Senator McNamara and this subcommittee have taken an interest in the problem and want to find ways and means to aid those of us in local government to meet the challenge of our aging population. You will be hearing expert testimony from people who have spent years in dealing with problems of public health and welfare, people who are intimately acquainted with the needs of our senior citizens, but I do want to call to the attention of the subcommittee some ideas which may give you a picture of what we local officials have to consider. URBAN RENEWAL HITS AGED Grand First, there is the matter of urban renewal programs. Rapids has embarked upon a large program which will result in the redevelopment of one of the city's oldest areas. Eight hundred fifty families will have to be relocated to new housing as a result of this program, and the expressway program in the city. Many of these people in the affected areas are first-generation Americans of advanced years. Some have little else in this world than the roof over their heads, houses they bought and paid for over a period of many years; homes of very modest means. Their incomes are very small. Some just get by on small pensions only because they own their own homes. Now they face the prospect of being moved. Many of these houses are rundown and won't bring much when sold to the government for expressway or redevelopment. Although these people may get enough from their homes to make a downpayment on a new house somewhere else, their incomes are not sufficient to continue large payments or maintenance on new houses and still keep food on their tables. Some provision for mass housing is going to have to be made. I urge this subcommittee to consider some sort of a program which will stimulate private developers to build a type of housing which will meet the economic needs of this group of older people. They are depending upon us. ADEQUATE HOUSING I would like to tell this subcommittee something which I think they should consider in reviewing this problem of adequate housing. In Grand Rapids there is a street which has many small, inadequate rooms over stores where older men without friends or relatives seem to congregate. Their living conditions are to be pitied. Some of these rooms are so bad they are under the close scrutiny of our health department, which is concerned with the lack of sanitary facilities. The men who live on this street are not properly housed, nor do they know how to take care of their other needs, such as personal appearance and proper diet. I have talked to these people to find out what it is that brings them to Bridge Street. I find many of them with good pensions and could afford to live in better quarters. Companionship is the thing that attracts them to Bridge Street. They want the company of others, the attraction of the street lights, and people to talk to. Talking with these people makes me feel very strongly that it is not sufficient to provide just clean rooms and sanitary facilities in new buildings somewhere else. These older citizens have to be housed in places where they can enjoy the companionship of others, where they have the freedom to get out and do things for themselves in stores, and where there are suitable recreational facilities. THE $1,200 LIMITATION I wonder if we don't sometimes tend to minimize the ability of older people to do things for themselves. Many persons over 65 are fully capable of working and earning a living. I would urge this subcommittee to consider liberalizing social security provisions which limit |