Growing Old Amidst Suburban Sprawl
What seemed a great idea in the sixties - suburbs - comes back to haunt our aging population as it becomes increasingly more difficult to care for them amidst suburban sprawl. There are good things to be said for Urban locations when you are elderly. It seems nutty and counter intuitive, but Dianne Stafford at the KC star is pointing out one of the greater challenges facing the US in the coming three decades.
And so the aging former folk dancer now slides a walker carefully across her kitchen floor as Kartus shepherds her to the car.
“The wonderful thing about this service is that I don’t have to impose on friends,” Baggett says of the ride, for which she pays $5. “And I’ve met some delightful people who volunteer.”Although Baggett got her ride, the patchwork of volunteer and publicly subsidized ride services that exists for the elderly in the Kansas City area is sadly deficient. They’re all limited by geography, by riders’ incomes or by availability of volunteer drivers.
If the area’s elderly transportation system is challenged now, think of the demands on it in 20 years when the over-65 population has doubled.
Today’s fractured web of family, friends and tax- or grant-supported van services won’t cut it for the growing numbers of frail, disabled or poor elderly who can’t hire cabs or can’t make their way to curbs for van or bus pickups.