Suburbs See a Challenge as Residents Grow Older

By Lizette Alvarez, The New York Times

December 4, 2009

Puzzle Room: Midge Bolton at Hamilton Township's senior center.

The trash talk on the boccie court at the Hamilton Township Senior Center was heating up.

“What’s the matter, you can’t bend down?” Natale Gigliotti, 71, shouted to an opposing player who lunged as he tossed the ball. “Corto, corto” — short, short — Mr. Gigliotti said as the ball landed. “That’s a boo-boo.” 

“Ohhhh, they love to talk,” said Ray Fink, 79, Mr. Gigliotti’s boccie partner and a regular at the center’s billiard tables and boccie court.

Hamilton, in Mercer County, is a pleasant suburban town, not far from Trenton, with a smattering of historic homes, the requisite big-box stores and a pre-Revolutionary pedigree. It also has more residents who are 65 and older than many other towns in New Jersey — 15 percent of its nearly 94,000 people, while in some towns the proportion is 5 percent or less — and that demographic fact has forced Hamilton to pay close attention to the needs of its elderly.

This is not to say that other towns and counties are far behind. 

In just two years, baby boomers will start to retire, and by 2030 the number of America’s elderly is expected to reach 72 million, more than double the number in 2000. Demographers expect the suburbs to age particularly quickly, as residents retire close to home, or as those who have already moved to the Sun Belt return to live near relatives as they grow frail. 

Some towns are already feeling these effects: Twenty percent of Glen Cove, in Nassau County, is 65 and older, for instance, as is 23 percent of Somers, in Westchester County. 

This increase in the number of elderly will place unparalleled strains on many suburbs’ services. 

“In the Northeast, we have to look at it as if the clock is ticking,” said Brian M. Hughes, the Mercer County executive. “We have an aging housing stock and a population that is not increasing as much as the rest of the country. We need to figure out how we’re going to provide more services with a smaller tax base.”

Mercer County, with its grayer population, offers a peek at the future in terms of preparing for its aging residents. 

On the housing front, the county has seen a sharp rise in developments for people 55 and over. These adult communities, some with house prices reaching $500,000, pay homage to the retirement villages of Florida, only on a smaller scale. They offer gardens, large clubhouses and swimming pools, games and a built-in social life.

An estimated 13 such adult communities have been built in Mercer County since 2002 — a much brisker pace than in previous years. Almost all their homes, usually one story and requiring little yardwork, are tailor-made for the aging. 

The county has also seen a boom in assisted-living facilities, said Sherrill Senter, a real estate agent with the Keller Williams Hamilton firm, who added that builders are planning for older people even in the general housing market. Many newer houses, she says, have a bedroom on the first floor or a study that can easily be converted into a bedroom for an aging parent. 

Real estate agents, eager to learn of plans that will affect them, now attend meetings between nonprofit groups and the Mercer County Office on Aging.

The county has also supplemented its network of shuttle vans for the elderly by arranging to use other vans, borrowed from the Association of Retarded Citizens and other groups, when available. And the Hamilton senior center is offering its own transportation service — something such centers do not often do. 

“As the population ages, we have to find a way to get them mobile,” said Kathleen Fitzgerald, a nurse and the supervisor of senior services at the center.
 
Last year, also with its eye on a grayer future, Mercer Community College started to offer a certificate in gerontology for health care providers, social workers, caregivers and others. The required courses include such subjects as the aging process, memory loss and a holistic approach to aging. 

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