Aging in Place: How Habitat’s focus on critical home repairs helps seniors grow old where they grew up

Habitat Greater San Francisco volunteers undertaking critical home repairs

9 Minute Read

Sheila is eighty years young and lives in East Palo Alto in San Mateo County. She moved in to her single family home back in 1962 and raised her daughter single-handed after her husband died in 1970.

She worked her entire career as a nursing assistant and, while it wasn’t always easy, especially in our area, she was able to keep her home as a haven for her family. Hers is an inspiring and courageous life.
But like so many others in her position, she seldom had the resources to tend to repairs. And so, inevitably, over the years, her home deteriorated. Chronic issues continued to worsen each year and, of course, new problems continued to crop up. In the case of Sheila’s home, this meant wooden floors that were riddled with cracks and holes caused by termites, stairs that were in an unsafe condition and access to the rear yard that was impeded.

And that, in particular, was a great shame. Sheila often spoke of her memories of hosting barbeques out back, and spending hours carefully planting hydrangeas and geraniums.

Before Habitat arrived this simply was no longer possible and had not been for some time.

Things to remember:

Seniors on reduced incomes' livable space is often reduced due to home improvement issues
US households over 65 is set to rise to 34 percent in 2038
Many older adults living alone have higher disability rates and lower incomes than couples
Most older people want to grow old in their homes, and ensuring they can do so is important to the communities in which they live
1 in 3 adults over 65 fall each year so simple modifications like grab bars and handrails can make a home safe

We see seniors, living on small and fixed incomes, who are finding their lives becoming smaller as the livable space inside their homes is reduced — because the stairs are no longer safe enough to use, or every room isn’t warm enough to stay in, or the outside pathways are too cracked to walk over

This is something that we see time and again when we go in to homes for the first time. We see seniors, living on small and fixed incomes, who are finding their lives becoming smaller as the livable space inside their homes is reduced — because the stairs are no longer safe enough to use, or every room isn’t warm enough to stay in, or the outside pathways are too cracked to walk over.

So they retreat in to one space — and struggle to thrive in their most precious years. And it goes without saying that the value of the asset that they spent so much time carefully paying for is often irretrievably harmed.

For Sheila, who had been a fixture in her community for so many years, the possibility of being forced to sell her home, and potentially move far away from her family, her friends, and her church was too much to bear.

And that’s where Habitat comes in. Habitat’s mission is to build and preserve homeownership — and an important part of that is a home repair program which is aimed at homeowners who are on limited incomes and which helps them hold on to their asset. Most often these are seniors.

Through this work we help seniors continue to grow old where they grew up. To maintain the community and family networks that a home is frequently the center of. And to preserve an asset that they have paid all their lives to accumulate.

And so Sheila won’t have to move and become just another in the long list of Bay Area families displaced by housing costs.

Critical home repair clientele
Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco’s critical home repair program has always been an important part of our work. Unlike our home building, which takes in all of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, our home repair program is focused on those areas of most need where we can do the most good.

Predominantly, we focus on San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, and the surrounding area, East Palo Alto, in San Mateo County, and Belle Haven, a traditionally African-American neighborhood in Menlo Park.

The average age of the homeowners we typically help in San Francisco’s Bayview is 65. They are retired teachers aides, nursing assistants, postal workers — all of whom own their own homes but who are also living on low fixed incomes. They are a vital part of the fabric of our communities.

Many African American homeowners have lived in their neighborhood for decades, providing their families and extended communities with anchors in the district, opening their homes to gatherings, and providing child care and respite to younger generations.

In East Palo Alto, African Americans represented 55% of the population in 1980. Today that figure is closer to 13%. East Palo Alto has lost more than half of its African American homeowners since 2000. 81% of East Palo Alto homeowners are of color and, statistically, their wealth is tied up in their homes more than other communities. Home equity makes up 92% of African American homeowners’ personal net worth vs. 58% for white homeowners.

So our home repairs are concentrated mostly on seniors, most of whom have lived in their home for a very substantial period of time, and who are, in our priority areas, predominantly African American.

Demographic trends
There will be an increasing number of senior homeowners just like Sheila who will be in need of additional support in the years ahead.

The share of all US households age 65 and over is set to rise: from 26 percent in 2018 to 34 percent in 2038. Over the same period the number of households age 80 and over will grow even more rapidly: rising from 8.1 million to 17.5 million — accounting for 12 percent of all households.

Most retirement age adults live in small households. Indeed 35 million of the nearly 50 million adults age 65 and over in 2017 lived either alone or with a spouse or partner. Some 42 percent of households in this age group consisted of a single person and 37 percent were ‘empty nester’ couples.

The share of older adults living alone increases sharply with age: reaching 57 percent among households in their 80s and beyond. This increase is important because many people in this age range, that live alone, have higher disability rates and lower incomes than same-age couples.

The overwhelming majority of people say they want to grow old in their homes. As older residents are often the bedrock of their communities, we have a lot of work to do to ensure they can continue to serve this critical role as they age.

A fixture in San Francisco's Bayview
Homeowner Florence typifies this desire to ‘age in place’. Her parents bought the family home, in San Francisco’s Bayview, in 1967. Today she is in her mid-70s and she tells us of the changes that her community has seen recently — older families that she knew gradually moving out and newer people coming in to buy. People she knows are beginning to pass away.

Florence tells us that she had great parents that taught her how to manage her finances. Her mother ‘was always a saver’, she says, while her father ‘was more adventurous’. So what happened? Well, her dad ‘put his foot down’ and said ‘we will buy a home’. And Florence has worked to maintain it as best she could.

Safety was a big issue in Florence’s home — and especially making sure the house was suitable for her to move around in as mobility became more of a problem. Grab bars were added to the bathroom, dilapidated and uneven flooring was replaced downstairs, banisters replaced, electrical work undertaken to improve safety, insulation added for warmth, cabinets and shelving replaced, and some cosmetic improvements made such as exterior paintwork. All in all a pretty thorough job of work done on this 1960s-vintage house.

Today Florence says that she does feel safer in her home. She laughs when she tells us that she was very unsure about the installation of grab bars, but now she uses them all the time and wouldn’t be without them.

She hopes to pass on her home to her nieces and grand nieces for them to continue to live in — and so help another generation of a family continue to live in an increasingly unaffordable San Francisco.

Florence’s 1960s era-home illustrates what is a fact of life: that most of us live in homes that were not designed for graceful aging. Tight bathrooms, steep staircases and narrow halls become increasingly hazardous to navigate over time. Add to that, maybe, an outdated electrical system and poorly maintained gas appliances, which are a serious threat to health and safety, and you have a combination of worsening conditions that augur poorly for aging in place.

1 in 3 adults aged 65 or older falls each year, and half of those falls occur at home, many resulting in serious injuries. Sometimes simple modifications — such as grab bars and handrails — can make a home safe. Other times much more extensive repairs are required and Habitat Greater San Francisco’s area of expertise is the type of major repairs that keep residents from getting cold, wet and sick.

The overwhelming majority of people say they want to grow old in their homes. As older residents are often the bedrock of their communities, we have a lot of work to do to ensure they can continue to serve this critical role as they age.

Powered by volunteers
Now we are lucky to be able to bring together our professional construction staff and our army of volunteers to get this work done.

As you can see, our volunteers love doing it, and it is enormously appreciated by the homeowners. We bring together individual volunteers — including many ‘regulars’ who frequently have construction-industry experience — along with groups from local corporations, community groups, and faith groups.

Penny was 71 years old and had been living in her house in the Bayview for half a century. But in the last decade she had been struggling with poorer health and had begun to use a walker. She had had to have a kidney transplant and was in remission from cancer.

When we met her, Penny had not been able to enjoy — or even access — her backyard for years because the steps to the yard had disintegrated. In the meantime the fence between her house and an abandoned building next door had collapsed on to her property, having been weighed-down by many years of ivy growth.

Over three days, Habitat replaced the access steps to the yard, cleared the yard out, and installed some planter boxes. Our team built a new fence and patched holes and replaced rotten siding on the home’s exterior — and also replaced a gutter that was leaking into the Penny’s bedroom.

Because of this work, Penny won’t be displaced. And, of course, she doesn’t want to be! She spent 30 years working as a teacher’s aide in a local elementary school and has very deep community connections. Her late husband worked as a warehouse man at a food distributor in San Bruno. She fondly recalls her neighborhood when she was growing up as a place that had ‘everything you could think of’ — a theatre, a hardware store, a saddle store. There were no cars around when she was young. She is well known on her street today and she was especially grateful for the extra help of her neighbors next door when she was sick.

Penny plans to give her home to her children. Until then, she is enjoying spending time in her yard once again. She tells us that, after her transplant, she had to take a lot of medication and vitamins. ‘Now the yard is cleared’ she says ‘I get more vitamin D and my doctor noticed! I go out there and I soak in the sun.’

Her resilience is an inspiration. Penny fought against going in to a home for rehabilitation — she desperately wanted to stay in her home even when very unwell. She cherishes her independence and she says that, if she didn’t have it, it would negatively impact her health.

Powered by volunteers. Keeping seniors warm, dry, healthy, and mobile
Because this work is so important, and the need of homeowners like Penny is set to grow, Habitat will be expanding our critical home repair program to other places in the months ahead.

We know that keeping our seniors warm, dry, healthy and mobile in their homes are critical factors in enabling them to successfully age in place. Habitat is determined to continue this work to make sure that they can.

So long-time Bay Area residents like Sheila, Forence, and Penny can continue to grow old where they grew up.

*Homeowner names have been changed for privacy.

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