BY JACKSON CHEN | Borough President Gale Brewer released an 80-page resource guide for senior citizens that will be distributed by the thousands throughout Manhattan.
To kick-start the circulation of her info packets, Brewer visited three senior centers on March 4 and offered about a hundred copies of “Age-Smart Manhattan” to residents just prior to their lunch hour.
While many city dwellers take to the web to search for whatever services they need, senior citizens have a tougher time locating certain resources, she explained.
“The issue is senior information is often hard to come by,” Brewer said. “We have to make sure these books get out to seniors who don’t go on the web.”
The resource guide acts as both a crash course in understanding what benefits — like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — are available to seniors and a modern phonebook of relevant city agencies, senior centers, and physicians that are available throughout the borough.
“It lists all the senior centers in Manhattan, the services they provide, do they have meals,” Brewer said. “The kinds of stuff that [we] would Google.”
However, for the senior community, some with limited tech capabilities, Brewer said, she wants her guide to fill in any gaps that exist.
The borough president’s first stop of the tour brought her to Project FIND, a nonprofit senior services provider, and its Woodstock Senior Center at 127 West 43rd Street. Joined by the group’s executive director David Gillcrist and MetroPlus Health Plan’s director of intergovernmental relations, Ron Law, Brewer greeted dozens of residents with packets both in English and Spanish.
According to the borough president, one of the bigger issues with the senior population was the lack of affordable dental care. While there are many programs for children and their teeth, Brewer said there weren’t many options for seniors.
Juan Arroyo, an eight-year resident of the Woodstock center, agreed that dental service was particularly tough for him to find. Equipped with the new resource guide, Arroyo said, it would come in handy for any service he needed.
“It’s better than a phonebook,” Arroyo, 80, said. “This here gives you the information you need.”
Leaving the Woodstock residents to comb through the guide, Brewer headed north to drop off more of her “Age-Smart Manhattan” booklets at senior centers in East and Central Harlem.
In addition to her guide, Brewer will be holding a seniors’ informational expo focused on brain health, called “Up With Aging,” on March 20, from 12:30 to 5 p.m., at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. For more information, visit upwithaging.eventbrite.com.
