Aging in Place
If someone you love lives in D8 and you’ve started noticing the things that could make it harder for them to stay — or if that someone is you — I want to know what you’re seeing.
D8 is well-positioned to get this right if we act now.
Here’s something I didn’t expect when I started this research: District 8 might be one of the best-positioned districts in the city to get aging in place right.
The research on aging well keeps pointing back to the same factor: social connection. D8 has that: 63% of seniors here are between 65 and 74. Most are active, connected, and rooted in neighborhoods they helped build. Noe Valley, Glen Park, Diamond Heights, and the Castro are all places where people know their neighbors, and that’s not something to take for granted.
The issue is that we don’t currently have the infrastructure to match that. Some of that infrastructure is surprisingly cheap. A visitability standard in new construction adds $100 to $600 per unit. Retrofitting those same features later costs over $10,000. New York funds 43 “Naturally Occurring Retirement Community” programs that bring services to where seniors already live, at about $500 per person per year. San Francisco has zero. Meanwhile, the city’s Senior Home Repair Program offers up to $50,000 for accessibility modifications but currently excludes D8.
There’s a real window here. Our senior population is about to grow significantly, and we can either scramble to catch up or have the systems in place when people need them. I’d rather be the district that figured this out early. My full report will lay out what that looks like: visitability standards, neighborhood-based service hubs, and closing the gaps in programs that skip over D8.
In the meantime, if you know something I should know, tell me. I personally read every submission.
Prefer to talk about this in person? I hold regular office hours and am also happy to meet one-on-one.