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November 5, 2007 - New Orleans City Business
New Orleans is younger after a loss of seniors
By Richard A. Webster
Gordon Wadge, president of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, remembers talking with his elderly mother, Gloria Wadge, shortly after Hurricane Katrina.
Gloria Wadge was forced to leave her New Orleans home for the first time in her life after evacuating to Missouri where she stayed temporarily with one of her daughters. Wadge said his mother was desperate to return home.
“We had some very emotional conversations,” Wadge said. “She told me, ‘I just want to come home and die in the house your father and I built.’”
Gloria Wadge’s home was undamaged but the circle of neighbors she depended on was shattered.
“There was an elderly couple she kept up with, but the husband died of a heart attack during the evacuation,” Wadge said. “Then there was the neighbor on the other side who came over for tea every day who was so traumatized by the storm that she moved across the lake to live with her daughter.
“And there was another neighbor across the street who was sick with cancer. I’m sure the stress of the storm accelerated that illness because he’s since deceased.”
Katrina disproportionately affected the elderly and left New Orleans a younger city.
Before the hurricane, there were 56,707 people older than 65 in New Orleans compared with 21,025 in 2006, a 63 percent decrease, according to the Greater New Orleans Data Center.
Prior to the storm, the New Orleans Council on Aging served 3,000 elderly resident per day compared with 800 post-Katrina, a 73 percent drop.
Of the estimated 1,800 people who died during the storm, 1,332, or 74 percent, were older than 60, according to the New Orleans Council on Aging.
Like Gloria Wadge, many of the elderly are desperate to return to New Orleans, the only home many have known, said Tom Laughlin, CEO of the Jefferson Council on Aging.
“There are people who want to come but they can’t because there’s nothing to bring them home to,” Laughlin said. “And many of them are dying while they wait. It’s nostalgia gone crazy. All they want to do is come home to die.”
There are few services for the elderly post-Katrina. There were 54 nursing homes in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes pre-K. Today there are 37, a 31 percent drop.
The number of New Orleans nursing homes dropped 40 percent from 25 to 15.
Housing remains the biggest issue, said Wadge. The storm destroyed or damaged an estimated 200,000 homes, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development permanently closed the St. Bernard, Lafitte and C.J. Peete housing developments and large sections of B.W. Cooper, Fischer and Guste where many of the elderly lived.
“We have people who call in and say they wish they would have died, that they shouldn’t have left so they could have died here in the storm,” said Howard Rodgers, executive director of the New Orleans Council on Aging.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans Christopher Homes program operated more than 2,500 apartment units for the low- and fixed-income elderly. Today, only 1,200 are habitable while the waiting list exceeds 1,000.
“I don’t see a mass return of the elderly that have been displaced,” said Wadge. “We may see more of the elderly from New Orleans move regionally if they don’t move out of state. They’ll move to Jefferson, St. Tammany, St. Charles or St. John. That’s what’s going to happen here in New Orleans. Those of us who live here know you have to have a thick skin to fight through this slow recovery.”
But for the elderly who have returned, Catholic Charities has provided services including meal deliveries, three adult day health care centers, case management, employment help and mental health programs.
On Sept. 1, Catholic Charities opened the Program of All Inclusive Care for the Elderly at St. Cecilia’s Church, 4201 N. Rampart St.
PACE, a national program operating in 24 states, offers a package of services designed to allow the elderly to live independently at home rather than a nursing home.
The adult health daycare center provides primary care, speech, occupational and physical therapy, full-service pharmacy and dental services.
If seniors require specialty medical care, PACE New Orleans is contracted with Ochsner Health System and provides transportation to the hospital.
PACE also offers off-site care at home, including nurses, meals and a lifeline alert system in case of emergencies. The program also provides the elderly with medical equipment, ramps and other safety devices.
PACE is funded through Medicare and Medicaid. To be eligible individuals must require a nursing home level of care but be capable of living at home without putting themselves or others at danger.
The local program has the capacity to serve 96 individuals and has 15 enrolled for November.
Executive Director Stephanie Smith said PACE takes a holistic approach that addresses the body, mind and spirit as opposed to treating only the physical needs of the elderly.
“It’s shocking when you see the conditions some of these poor people live in,” Smith said. “These are the frail and elderly who suffer from dementia, who have been shuffled around to 20 different doctors in multiple states since the storm.
“All they want is to be home and that’s what we are able to provide, an alternative to nursing homes. We hope to provide al the services that will allow many of the elderly to return to their city.”
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