The Colorado River Basin stretches through seven states — Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico — and is a vital source of water and electricity for the American West. It provides hydropower to millions and supplies water to more than 40 million people, including across some of the country’s largest cities, like Los Angeles and Phoenix. The farmlands that rely on it stock the nation’s supermarkets with vegetables in winter.
But the river has been drying up for more than two decades. To stabilize it, California, Arizona and Nevada — the three states that make up the system’s “Lower Basin” — reached an agreement with the Biden administration to conserve 3 million acre-feet of water over the next three years, which is 13 percent of those states’ total allocation from the river. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons of water.
In exchange, the Biden administration will compensate the states with about $1.2 billion in federal funds.
How will the deal change water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell?
The deal is intended to protect the country’s largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — from dropping to critical levels over the next three years and ward off the possibility of a “dead pool” scenario, in which the reservoirs fall so low that the river can’t flow out.
Are you caring for an aging relative? We want to hear from you
Tell us your story of caring for an aging relative
The Washington Post is covering failures in the United States’s long-term care system, which is under unprecedented pressure as the Baby Boom generation reaches old age.
Many families are struggling to find and afford care for vulnerable parents and spouses, navigating scarce options that often don’t meet their needs and ruining their finances along the way.
Do you have a story to tell?
Please fill out this form:
“It’s just a catastrophe. This is the fastest-growing group of people who are homeless,” said Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine and a vulnerable populations researcher at the University of California at San Francisco.
The largest shelter provider in Arizona, Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), is rushing to open an over-55 shelter in a former Phoenix hotel this summer with private rooms and medical and social services tailored for old people. The facility will open with 40 beds and eventually reach a capacity of 170, but that will barely begin to address the problem of keeping older people safe and healthy. CASS says it served 1,717 older adults in 2022, an increase in one year of 43 percent.
In Orange County, a Medicaid plan is creating a 119-bed, first-of-its-kind unit that essentially will serve as an assisted-living facility exclusively for homeless people, said Kelly Bruno-Nelson, executive director for the plan, CalOptima Health.
“The current shelter system cannot accommodate the physical needs of this population,” she said.
In San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Anchorage, seniors also are staying for months in respite centers that were meant to provide a short-term stay for homeless people to recuperate. In Boise, shelter operators are hiring staff with backgrounds in long-term care to help homeless clients manage their daily needs while living for long stretches in hotels.
The homeless population is famously difficult to count. People 55 and older represented 16.5 percent of America’s homeless population of 1.45 million in 2019, according to the most recent reliable data. Dennis Culhane, a professor and social science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the population of homeless seniors 65 and older will double or even triple 2017 levels in some places before peaking around 2030.
“It’s in crisis proportions. It’s in your face,” Culhane said. “Average citizens can see people in wheelchairs, people in walkers, people with incontinence and colostomy bags making their living out of a tent.”
A devastating combination of factors is to blame for the rising problem. People in the second half of the baby boom, who came of age during recessions in the 1970s and 1980s, face distinct economic disadvantages, Culhane said. Housing costs are soaring in many cities. The nation’s system of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities is not equipped to handle the needs of homeless people, who suffer from high rates of substance abuse and mental illness.
Before Phoenix officials began clearing some streets of people this month, there were about 900 people living in a few square blocks known as “The Zone” and another 900 or so living in emergency shelters on the gated Human Services Campus in the same neighborhood, shelter operators said.
In Maricopa County, which encompasses the Phoenix metro area, an annual count in January documented more than 2,000 homeless people 55 and above, and nearly a third of those were 65 or older.
Living on the street ravages the human body, street doctors and advocates say. Homeless people contract chronic diseases and other geriatric problems much earlier than average. But long waits for housing and a lack of specialized care expose them to a continued onslaught on their health.
After treatment for an acute illness, hospitals often discharge homeless patients, who wind up back in shelters or even back into their sidewalk tents and makeshift lean-tos, in what health practitioners in Phoenix ruefully call “treat-and-street.”
The threat of relapses and rehospitalizations is large. Aid workers said seniors’ medicine is often stolen by younger homeless people on the streets. It is not unusual to assist clients with dementia.
Staff at CASS pass out adult diapers. Some unhoused seniors wait in the CASS shelter for a year or more while they wait placement in subsidized housing, assisted living or a nursing home. But CASS is not licensed to provide nursing-home-level care, and staff are not trained as nursing assistants. So patients cannot remain if they have advanced geriatric care needs and require help with activities of daily living such as dressing, eating and going to the bathroom.
“They need a higher level of care than the current shelter system can provide,” said Lisa Glow, chief executive of CASS. “There have been times here where we had to turn people away, where it’s really heartbreaking. They come in a wheelchair, late at night, and they can’t take care of themselves.”
Related video: Nearly a dozen homeless encampments found in the bosque (KOAT Albuquerque)
In those instances, staff work to get an alternative space as quickly as possible, such as a hotel, she said.
Commenti
Posta un commento