January 12, 2026 • 18 mins
With both affordability top of mind, and the elderly population growing faster than any other age group—including in New York—our guest is Gayle Horwitz, the new CEO of JASA, The City’s go-to non profit supporting older New Yorkers. We discuss how affordability and housing demand is impacting older residents and what retirement looks like for low-to-moderate income New Yorkers. Founded over 50 years ago, JASA is NYC’s largest nonprofit manager of senior affordable housing, and a leading expert and innovator in aging services.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Happy New Year and thanks for listening. To get connected
with affordability top of mind, top of conversation, and the elderly,
the fastest growing age group in the country, including in
New York. We're starting the year with a conversation with
Gail Horwitz. She is the new CEO of JASA, the
city's go to nonprofit supporting older New Yorkers. We will
talk about how affordability is impacting older residents, what does
(00:36):
she see on the horizon for housing as the need
grows every day, and what does retirement look like for
low to moderate income New Yorkers. Gail Horwitz, thank you
for being on to Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to talk about
JASA and to start the new year on a really
important topic.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You can find out more about the organization at JASA
and Gail Horwitz joins JOSA from CUNY, where she most
recently served as Senior Vice Chancellor and Secretary of the
Board of Trustees. Since twenty sixteen. She's held various roles
at CUNY, including Senior Advisor to the Chancellor and Interim
President of the Research Foundation at CuNi. So, how did
(01:18):
your life and your career lead you to JOSA What
attracted you to this role?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Thank you for having me, and I'm happy to answer
that question. I've spent almost forty years working in city
and state government, and I have a master's in public
administration and have committed myself to a career in public service.
So I have known of JASA for many, many years
(01:46):
because of the work that I've done, and when I
got the call, I knew that this was something I
wanted to be a part of, and so I was
very happy to partake in the process. And as I
got to know the organization more than what I had
known from the outside, I couldn't resist joining such an
(02:08):
incredible place which has a legacy of innovation, has really
been at the forefront of helping seniors and older adults
in New York City since the sixties the late sixties.
So I came to this work of real desire to
make a difference. And as you already mentioned, the growing
(02:29):
population of older adults in New York City is not
a small issue. In fact, there are more older adults
in New York City now than there are school children,
and we can talk about the various reasons why that's happening.
There are families leaving New York City and so the
school age population is smaller, But it's really about the
fact that people are living longer and we want to
(02:49):
be sure that we can provide people with services that
they need all through the stages of aging. Older adults
are not a monolith. They run the age from sixty
on up, and we want to be sure that we
meet people where they are at their different stages of
(03:10):
the aging process.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
JOSSO supports more than forty thousand older New Yorkers every year.
What is the work.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So what's incredible about the work that we do is
that it is really complex and complicated and very diverse,
and so we have more than twenty programs that we're
offering and we provide well. We operate twelve affordable housing properties,
so there are more than twenty five hundred people living
(03:39):
in our buildings, which I'm really delighted and proud to
say are super affordable and really really nice and incredible places,
and we provide services on location we have a licensed
home care agency, and we have a real breath of
what we call integrative services across the city, spanning free
(04:01):
legal services, health and mental health services, home delivered meals,
social programming at our senior centers, and community training on
elder abuse, pure health support and caregiver assistance, and so
much more so. Really, wherever you are, whatever you need,
whether it's in your home, whether it's outsiding community, and
(04:24):
whatever is happening to you right in this moment, we
will be able to help you.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
As you mentioned before we started this conversation, you've been
in this role for about six months, so you're getting
your feet wet and finding out what's going on the
last year. The last couple of years have been tremendously
challenging for everybody. For older New Yorkers of course, what
does retirement and aging look like for older New Yorkers
right now who are less affluent.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So it's really interesting. I think that this fall we
really experienced with the pause on the snap benefits, I
think that people don't understand really kind of the percarity
of everyone's situation. And so the minute that was pulled back,
the affordability issue and the food insecurity issues for seniors
(05:15):
is not a small thing. So you live on your
Social Security check coms, you have a very specific amount
of money, you have to make decisions about getting medication
or food, and then all of a sudden, your food
benefits are paused and now the decisions are very, very complicated.
And so what it did was laid bare how many
(05:37):
many older adults having to make traconian choices every day
about what they're going to how they're going to use
their limited resources. And so what we were able to
do actually is pivot very quickly. Well, we already provide
meals some close to a million meals a year through
our home delivered meals and at our eighteen older adult
(06:00):
so there's a hot meal every single day at an
older adult center. And the home delivered meals are for
people who are not able to get out and cook
their own meals. But we actually started an emergency food
drive and set up our own food pantry, and we
(06:20):
have food pantries that come to our older adult centers.
We also have an incredible program with school age children
where they're growing produce and this huge hydro hydroponics program
and then they're bringing the fresh produce to our older
adult centers. So there's the interaction with the younger generation
(06:42):
and the older adults, and everybody's getting fresh produce. I
think it was some thirty five hundred pounds of fresh
produce last year. But what we really put a word
out to raise money and raise funds so that we
can can continue to provide meals and extra food and
(07:03):
food pantry items so people can cook for themselves. But
there it is a challenge for a lot of older adults.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I want to get back to that in just a moment,
but let's let everyone know who we're speaking with. Gail Horowitz.
She is the CEO of JASA, the city's go to
nonprofit supporting older New Yorkers. Found it over fifty years ago,
JASA is New York City's largest nonprofit manager of senior
affordable housing and a leading expert and innovator in aging services.
Their website is JASA dot org. You're listening to get
(07:33):
connected on one oh six point seven light FM. Sticking
with food for just a moment before we move on
to housing. You're talking about hydroponic gardens and all these
different shifts and ways to sort of cover the gap.
But You're not the only organization working with seniors and
not the only organization working with people who are hungry,
(07:53):
et cetera. Doing these things. So what's the long term
play when you're facing cuts and administrative disruptions from the government.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well, it's actually really interesting. I think that one of
the great things about New York City's nonprofit community is
that we all come together when there's a crisis. And
so while there's a limited pot of government funding either
through federal, state, or city, and we all have our
contracts and we're trying to provide services, we will come together.
(08:26):
So Meals on Wheels and all these different organizations we
figure out how to make sure that we can cover
who needs to be covered. And we also started to fundraise.
We had a huge campaign this fall, as we do
normally in the fall, but we had an emergency food
(08:47):
drive and people started to really step up and donate.
We have something called Jazza Eats where we are trying
to get the word out about our home delivered meals
and really through private donations, helping out and volunteer work
and all kinds of things, we are trying to fill
the gaps where government is not always able to do
(09:07):
that and with our other our fellow nonprofits helping working together,
and I think it's an incredible aspect of life in
New York City.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I visited a soup kitchen for seniors in the Theater
District just before the holiday, and people were there to eat,
but it was more notable to me how the staff said,
the clients will stay all day for the activities and
the community. Can you talk about the significance of that.
I'm sure you'res the same.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
It's the same thing at our older adult centers. They're
incredible places because you'll come for a hot meal, but
it's really you're going to stay all day. And so
I've been to several older adult centers. One of them
actually serves breakfast also, so they calm, they have breakfast,
they sit and they many of them are there to play.
(09:52):
They love to play cards. Many many of them have
exercise classes and dancing. And so when I go and
ask people at all the older adult centers, what else
can we do for you? What do you want more of?
What do you want less of? How can we make
this a better experience? Universally, everyone says more line dancing,
(10:12):
which I think is so awesome. And if you go
on our website you will see video after video there's
so much dancing and it really just show us that
there's so much joy and people want to come together
and share that, and they want to get moving, they
want to exercise, they want to dance, they want to
be part of something greater than themselves. We have some
(10:33):
places there aren't as many men, right, they're just the
men don't live as long. I mean, it is what
it is. But what I love is that in some
of our centers, and we have what's called a naturally
occurring retirement community up in co Opsidio is there one
day and there was a group of men who come
(10:54):
and they play dominoes and there's a tournament that's been
set up so that they and they play their game,
and there's a nurse that comes once a week. And
so while they're coming every day, the nurse sees them
once a week, and there's that check in so that
we can be sure that they someone is really kind
of paying attention. So we get them in playing dominoes,
(11:16):
but they're getting other services and that's really really important
and that happens at all of our through all of
our programming is that we're really trying to bring all
of the services and have them overlap. One of our
older adult centers out and Stare at City. When I
was speaking with them, they have mental health services once
a week that come on site at the center, and
(11:40):
they said that it fills up. It's one of their
most popular It's a group discussion and it's one of
the most popular things that they have. The other great
thing in our older adult centers is technology, as you
can imagine, So some places where we have technology classes
and then the most popular thing is one on one
so people come and they need help with their iPhone,
(12:03):
they need help with their iPad, they want to be
able to interact, and so those are services that we
also have that are older adult centers, just as some examples.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And by the way, this is also an opportunity to
get into volunteering, to find out more ways to sort
of pitch in for the average person. There's more on
the website JASA dot org. We only have about three
minutes left, so I want to talk about housing. JASHA
is the city's largest nonprofit manager of senior affordable housing.
What does the best affordable senior housing look like and
(12:35):
how much do we have versus how much do we need?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Well, we just don't have enough housing for everybody right.
In fact, I think last year the number was close
to twenty seven thousand people applied for housing with us,
and we have units, so a little under three thousand,
probably about twenty five twenty six hundred apartments that we're managing.
And we've been doing this for a very very long time.
(13:00):
And our buildings are immaculate and they the great thing
about our buildings is they're built for seniors. So if
you go into one of our buildings, you'll notice that
there are hand railings in every hallway because you might
not be very stable and you might need help. There
are the stairwells, and the floors are all color coded
(13:24):
because you don't always as your memory's going, you don't
necessarily always remember what's the number, but you'll recognize the color.
This is my floor. I'm on the red floor. So
there are all kinds of sensitive things. And also inside
your apartment it's designed for a senior. It's designed to
roll in a wheelchair should you need that, and make
the bathroom accessible. The same thing in the kitchens, as
(13:48):
they're all accessible and so there is a sensitivity to
the needs of seniors and it's extraordinarily affordable. And we
then also have on site services so that if you
need help with your benefits, you need help, you're having
reant issues, you have health issues, you need a home
(14:10):
care aid. We have daily services, and we have offices
to be able to provide those kinds of things, and
in some of our buildings we also have our older
adult centers, so you can go right downstairs and partake
in all of those kinds of services.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
We also have a new mayoral administration which out of
the gate seems to be focused on affordable housing as promised.
Youwer thoughts on what you've seen so far and how
you might be able to work together to increase the
housing stock for seniors.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I think that what's great is the focus on wanting
to build more housing and wanting to build more affordable housing.
So we are ready willing and able as a partner
to participate in any way that we can. We've worked
with lots of developers over the last couple of years
to build newer housing. Some of our housing is original
(14:59):
to JASA, going way back to the early eighties, and
now we are also being brought in on what's called
SARAH programs. The Sarah program are formerly homeless seniors and
so the developer and we will co develop in some instances,
but we can also be brought in as the service provider,
(15:22):
so the building gets built, the ser we'll provide services
for the formerly homeless seniors. We find that everybody comes
down to our office, whether you were formerly or homeless.
Everyone needs help. We don't turn anyone away. So we're ready,
willing and able to partner and participate as the city
decides to and how they're going to expand housing. So
(15:44):
it's a great thing for everyone.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
As you start this job, I can tell that you're
excited about it. You seem excited about this job. What
kind of gets you going and what are you most
looking forward to?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
What gets me going is actually when I'm out meeting
our clients, in talking to staff, and I'm on site,
I will leave you with an incredible story and that
makes me very proud. We have an incredible program out
in Brooklyn, our care Transitions program at my Monetes Hospital.
(16:18):
We will meet you bedside when you're discharged from the hospital.
It's very complicated. You've just you're in congestive heart failure,
you've had some major trauma, you're discharged from the hospital.
You have very complicated medications, complicated instructions, oftentimes not in
your native language. It's all done in English, and you're
going home with prescription bodels and all kinds of things.
(16:41):
We meet you bedside, we help you through those instructions,
and then within forty eight hours when you get home,
we will help you with a home visit. We'll be
there with equipment to take your blood pressure, to your pulse,
all these kinds of things, and we give you a
chart on how to manage your medicas in your language,
(17:02):
if whatever your native language is. We had a situation
where there was a woman who went home and she'd
been visited by one of our we have international medical
school graduates, really doctors, and Chinese was her native language,
and she wasn't feeling well. She took her blood pressure,
(17:22):
she knew something was off. She called our staff person
and they went over there immediately and basically saved her life.
Got her to the hospital. She was in the middle
of having a heart attack, and she knew where to call,
she felt comfortable to call, and we were able to
intervene and for me, I'm very proud of the fact
(17:42):
that we can do that, that our staff is very
talented and making those connections, making people feel comfortable and
knowing that they have a place to call. We're here
and what we do matters.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
For elder adults and caregivers. Listening right now, what's the
best way to get help from JOSSA.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So we have a help center that's open seven days
a week, and I can give you the phone number.
It's two one two two seven three five two seven two.
Call us anytime with any questions and we'll be sure
to help you and direct you in the right place.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
You can also visit the website jasa dot org. Gaiale
Horwitz of JOSA, thank you for being on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Thank you so much. You know, it's very nice to
be with you. Pappy me youa.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com, thanks for listening,
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Happy New Year and thanks for listening. To get connected
with affordability top of mind, top of conversation, and the elderly,
the fastest growing age group in the country, including in
New York. We're starting the year with a conversation with
Gail Horwitz. She is the new CEO of JASA, the
city's go to nonprofit supporting older New Yorkers. We will
talk about how affordability is impacting older residents, what does
(00:36):
she see on the horizon for housing as the need
grows every day, and what does retirement look like for
low to moderate income New Yorkers. Gail Horwitz, thank you
for being on to Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to talk about
JASA and to start the new year on a really
important topic.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You can find out more about the organization at JASA
and Gail Horwitz joins JOSA from CUNY, where she most
recently served as Senior Vice Chancellor and Secretary of the
Board of Trustees. Since twenty sixteen. She's held various roles
at CUNY, including Senior Advisor to the Chancellor and Interim
President of the Research Foundation at CuNi. So, how did
(01:18):
your life and your career lead you to JOSA What
attracted you to this role?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Thank you for having me, and I'm happy to answer
that question. I've spent almost forty years working in city
and state government, and I have a master's in public
administration and have committed myself to a career in public service.
So I have known of JASA for many, many years
(01:46):
because of the work that I've done, and when I
got the call, I knew that this was something I
wanted to be a part of, and so I was
very happy to partake in the process. And as I
got to know the organization more than what I had
known from the outside, I couldn't resist joining such an
(02:08):
incredible place which has a legacy of innovation, has really
been at the forefront of helping seniors and older adults
in New York City since the sixties the late sixties.
So I came to this work of real desire to
make a difference. And as you already mentioned, the growing
(02:29):
population of older adults in New York City is not
a small issue. In fact, there are more older adults
in New York City now than there are school children,
and we can talk about the various reasons why that's happening.
There are families leaving New York City and so the
school age population is smaller, But it's really about the
fact that people are living longer and we want to
(02:49):
be sure that we can provide people with services that
they need all through the stages of aging. Older adults
are not a monolith. They run the age from sixty
on up, and we want to be sure that we
meet people where they are at their different stages of
(03:10):
the aging process.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
JOSSO supports more than forty thousand older New Yorkers every year.
What is the work.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So what's incredible about the work that we do is
that it is really complex and complicated and very diverse,
and so we have more than twenty programs that we're
offering and we provide well. We operate twelve affordable housing properties,
so there are more than twenty five hundred people living
(03:39):
in our buildings, which I'm really delighted and proud to
say are super affordable and really really nice and incredible places,
and we provide services on location we have a licensed
home care agency, and we have a real breath of
what we call integrative services across the city, spanning free
(04:01):
legal services, health and mental health services, home delivered meals,
social programming at our senior centers, and community training on
elder abuse, pure health support and caregiver assistance, and so
much more so. Really, wherever you are, whatever you need,
whether it's in your home, whether it's outsiding community, and
(04:24):
whatever is happening to you right in this moment, we
will be able to help you.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
As you mentioned before we started this conversation, you've been
in this role for about six months, so you're getting
your feet wet and finding out what's going on the
last year. The last couple of years have been tremendously
challenging for everybody. For older New Yorkers of course, what
does retirement and aging look like for older New Yorkers
right now who are less affluent.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So it's really interesting. I think that this fall we
really experienced with the pause on the snap benefits, I
think that people don't understand really kind of the percarity
of everyone's situation. And so the minute that was pulled back,
the affordability issue and the food insecurity issues for seniors
(05:15):
is not a small thing. So you live on your
Social Security check coms, you have a very specific amount
of money, you have to make decisions about getting medication
or food, and then all of a sudden, your food
benefits are paused and now the decisions are very, very complicated.
And so what it did was laid bare how many
(05:37):
many older adults having to make traconian choices every day
about what they're going to how they're going to use
their limited resources. And so what we were able to
do actually is pivot very quickly. Well, we already provide
meals some close to a million meals a year through
our home delivered meals and at our eighteen older adult
(06:00):
so there's a hot meal every single day at an
older adult center. And the home delivered meals are for
people who are not able to get out and cook
their own meals. But we actually started an emergency food
drive and set up our own food pantry, and we
(06:20):
have food pantries that come to our older adult centers.
We also have an incredible program with school age children
where they're growing produce and this huge hydro hydroponics program
and then they're bringing the fresh produce to our older
adult centers. So there's the interaction with the younger generation
(06:42):
and the older adults, and everybody's getting fresh produce. I
think it was some thirty five hundred pounds of fresh
produce last year. But what we really put a word
out to raise money and raise funds so that we
can can continue to provide meals and extra food and
(07:03):
food pantry items so people can cook for themselves. But
there it is a challenge for a lot of older adults.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I want to get back to that in just a moment,
but let's let everyone know who we're speaking with. Gail Horowitz.
She is the CEO of JASA, the city's go to
nonprofit supporting older New Yorkers. Found it over fifty years ago,
JASA is New York City's largest nonprofit manager of senior
affordable housing and a leading expert and innovator in aging services.
Their website is JASA dot org. You're listening to get
(07:33):
connected on one oh six point seven light FM. Sticking
with food for just a moment before we move on
to housing. You're talking about hydroponic gardens and all these
different shifts and ways to sort of cover the gap.
But You're not the only organization working with seniors and
not the only organization working with people who are hungry,
(07:53):
et cetera. Doing these things. So what's the long term
play when you're facing cuts and administrative disruptions from the government.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well, it's actually really interesting. I think that one of
the great things about New York City's nonprofit community is
that we all come together when there's a crisis. And
so while there's a limited pot of government funding either
through federal, state, or city, and we all have our
contracts and we're trying to provide services, we will come together.
(08:26):
So Meals on Wheels and all these different organizations we
figure out how to make sure that we can cover
who needs to be covered. And we also started to fundraise.
We had a huge campaign this fall, as we do
normally in the fall, but we had an emergency food
(08:47):
drive and people started to really step up and donate.
We have something called Jazza Eats where we are trying
to get the word out about our home delivered meals
and really through private donations, helping out and volunteer work
and all kinds of things, we are trying to fill
the gaps where government is not always able to do
(09:07):
that and with our other our fellow nonprofits helping working together,
and I think it's an incredible aspect of life in
New York City.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I visited a soup kitchen for seniors in the Theater
District just before the holiday, and people were there to eat,
but it was more notable to me how the staff said,
the clients will stay all day for the activities and
the community. Can you talk about the significance of that.
I'm sure you'res the same.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
It's the same thing at our older adult centers. They're
incredible places because you'll come for a hot meal, but
it's really you're going to stay all day. And so
I've been to several older adult centers. One of them
actually serves breakfast also, so they calm, they have breakfast,
they sit and they many of them are there to play.
(09:52):
They love to play cards. Many many of them have
exercise classes and dancing. And so when I go and
ask people at all the older adult centers, what else
can we do for you? What do you want more of?
What do you want less of? How can we make
this a better experience? Universally, everyone says more line dancing,
(10:12):
which I think is so awesome. And if you go
on our website you will see video after video there's
so much dancing and it really just show us that
there's so much joy and people want to come together
and share that, and they want to get moving, they
want to exercise, they want to dance, they want to
be part of something greater than themselves. We have some
(10:33):
places there aren't as many men, right, they're just the
men don't live as long. I mean, it is what
it is. But what I love is that in some
of our centers, and we have what's called a naturally
occurring retirement community up in co Opsidio is there one
day and there was a group of men who come
(10:54):
and they play dominoes and there's a tournament that's been
set up so that they and they play their game,
and there's a nurse that comes once a week. And
so while they're coming every day, the nurse sees them
once a week, and there's that check in so that
we can be sure that they someone is really kind
of paying attention. So we get them in playing dominoes,
(11:16):
but they're getting other services and that's really really important
and that happens at all of our through all of
our programming is that we're really trying to bring all
of the services and have them overlap. One of our
older adult centers out and Stare at City. When I
was speaking with them, they have mental health services once
a week that come on site at the center, and
(11:40):
they said that it fills up. It's one of their
most popular It's a group discussion and it's one of
the most popular things that they have. The other great
thing in our older adult centers is technology, as you
can imagine, So some places where we have technology classes
and then the most popular thing is one on one
so people come and they need help with their iPhone,
(12:03):
they need help with their iPad, they want to be
able to interact, and so those are services that we
also have that are older adult centers, just as some examples.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And by the way, this is also an opportunity to
get into volunteering, to find out more ways to sort
of pitch in for the average person. There's more on
the website JASA dot org. We only have about three
minutes left, so I want to talk about housing. JASHA
is the city's largest nonprofit manager of senior affordable housing.
What does the best affordable senior housing look like and
(12:35):
how much do we have versus how much do we need?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Well, we just don't have enough housing for everybody right.
In fact, I think last year the number was close
to twenty seven thousand people applied for housing with us,
and we have units, so a little under three thousand,
probably about twenty five twenty six hundred apartments that we're managing.
And we've been doing this for a very very long time.
(13:00):
And our buildings are immaculate and they the great thing
about our buildings is they're built for seniors. So if
you go into one of our buildings, you'll notice that
there are hand railings in every hallway because you might
not be very stable and you might need help. There
are the stairwells, and the floors are all color coded
(13:24):
because you don't always as your memory's going, you don't
necessarily always remember what's the number, but you'll recognize the color.
This is my floor. I'm on the red floor. So
there are all kinds of sensitive things. And also inside
your apartment it's designed for a senior. It's designed to
roll in a wheelchair should you need that, and make
the bathroom accessible. The same thing in the kitchens, as
(13:48):
they're all accessible and so there is a sensitivity to
the needs of seniors and it's extraordinarily affordable. And we
then also have on site services so that if you
need help with your benefits, you need help, you're having
reant issues, you have health issues, you need a home
(14:10):
care aid. We have daily services, and we have offices
to be able to provide those kinds of things, and
in some of our buildings we also have our older
adult centers, so you can go right downstairs and partake
in all of those kinds of services.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
We also have a new mayoral administration which out of
the gate seems to be focused on affordable housing as promised.
Youwer thoughts on what you've seen so far and how
you might be able to work together to increase the
housing stock for seniors.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I think that what's great is the focus on wanting
to build more housing and wanting to build more affordable housing.
So we are ready willing and able as a partner
to participate in any way that we can. We've worked
with lots of developers over the last couple of years
to build newer housing. Some of our housing is original
(14:59):
to JASA, going way back to the early eighties, and
now we are also being brought in on what's called
SARAH programs. The Sarah program are formerly homeless seniors and
so the developer and we will co develop in some instances,
but we can also be brought in as the service provider,
(15:22):
so the building gets built, the ser we'll provide services
for the formerly homeless seniors. We find that everybody comes
down to our office, whether you were formerly or homeless.
Everyone needs help. We don't turn anyone away. So we're ready,
willing and able to partner and participate as the city
decides to and how they're going to expand housing. So
(15:44):
it's a great thing for everyone.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
As you start this job, I can tell that you're
excited about it. You seem excited about this job. What
kind of gets you going and what are you most
looking forward to?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
What gets me going is actually when I'm out meeting
our clients, in talking to staff, and I'm on site,
I will leave you with an incredible story and that
makes me very proud. We have an incredible program out
in Brooklyn, our care Transitions program at my Monetes Hospital.
(16:18):
We will meet you bedside when you're discharged from the hospital.
It's very complicated. You've just you're in congestive heart failure,
you've had some major trauma, you're discharged from the hospital.
You have very complicated medications, complicated instructions, oftentimes not in
your native language. It's all done in English, and you're
going home with prescription bodels and all kinds of things.
(16:41):
We meet you bedside, we help you through those instructions,
and then within forty eight hours when you get home,
we will help you with a home visit. We'll be
there with equipment to take your blood pressure, to your pulse,
all these kinds of things, and we give you a
chart on how to manage your medicas in your language,
(17:02):
if whatever your native language is. We had a situation
where there was a woman who went home and she'd
been visited by one of our we have international medical
school graduates, really doctors, and Chinese was her native language,
and she wasn't feeling well. She took her blood pressure,
(17:22):
she knew something was off. She called our staff person
and they went over there immediately and basically saved her life.
Got her to the hospital. She was in the middle
of having a heart attack, and she knew where to call,
she felt comfortable to call, and we were able to
intervene and for me, I'm very proud of the fact
(17:42):
that we can do that, that our staff is very
talented and making those connections, making people feel comfortable and
knowing that they have a place to call. We're here
and what we do matters.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
For elder adults and caregivers. Listening right now, what's the
best way to get help from JOSSA.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So we have a help center that's open seven days
a week, and I can give you the phone number.
It's two one two two seven three five two seven two.
Call us anytime with any questions and we'll be sure
to help you and direct you in the right place.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
You can also visit the website jasa dot org. Gaiale
Horwitz of JOSA, thank you for being on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Thank you so much. You know, it's very nice to
be with you. Pappy me youa.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com, thanks for listening,
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