Booked on Planning
Booked on Planning
Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation
Discover how cities can become more resilient to climate change by focusing on the needs of older adults. Join us as we sit down with Danielle Arigoni, the author behind "Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation." Danielle sheds light on the often-overlooked challenges that older populations face during climate-fueled disasters. From gaps in housing and public transit to emergency preparedness, you'll learn why integrating climate and aging planning efforts is crucial for community resilience.
Explore the heightened vulnerabilities faced by older adults in marginalized communities and the limitations of relying on individual preparedness. Through examples from recent local events, we highlight the transformative power of community-based disaster readiness and the essential role of neighborly support. Danielle discusses innovative, community-driven strategies in cities like Portland and New Orleans, demonstrating how targeted efforts can significantly bolster climate resilience for seniors.
Finally, we delve into proactive measures that communities can take to protect their aging populations. Learn about the crucial work of Area Agencies on Aging and the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities, and how these entities can partner with local planners. From shaded public transit stops to special needs registries and accessible disaster communication, Danielle shares actionable steps to create inclusive, resilient environments for older adults. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in safeguarding our most vulnerable populations against climate risks.
Show Notes:
- Further Reading: Understanding Disaster Insurance by Carollyn Kousky (Island Press) and When Driving is Not an Option by Anna Ziverts,
- To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/3X7UWNN or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
- To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
Episode artwork by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash
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Stephanie Rouse:You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked on Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this episode we talk with author Danielle Aragoni on her book Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation. Danielle is the Managing Director for Policy and Solutions at National Housing Trust, but she previously served as the Director of Livable Communities at AARP. In her book and our conversation we discussed the AARP Age-Friendly Network that she had a part in during her time with the organization.
Jennifer Hiatt:It was interesting to read climate resilience just as Lincoln was experiencing weather-related emergencies. I was actually really proud of our emergency response that our city team had, but it also really made me think about everything that we could be doing to do better.
Stephanie Rouse:Yes, we get into the fact that, while we have places for people to go in the event of extreme heat, we also don't extend those hours beyond 7 pm when the library closes. So things to work on Exactly. This book had me Googling what we were doing as a community here in Lincoln every few chapters. I knew that we'd become an age-friendly community in January of this year, but really had no idea on the specifics of it beyond that or what we were doing for our planning process. It also made me curious to figure out what our percentage of older adults is here in Lincoln that live outside of congregate facilities, given the national average, which is that only 2% of older adults live within a nursing home or retirement community.
Jennifer Hiatt:Yeah, I have to admit that I was a little embarrassed that you were the person who told me that we received that designation. So, as Danielle states, it does take a blend of personal action and community support to make sure that you are ready for a disaster. One of my favorite aspects of the book was the social component. You will almost always be one of the actual first responders in your neighborhood, so getting to know your neighbors and any special needs that they might have is important, so you can kind of come together and pull resources that way.
Stephanie Rouse:We touched on this in the conversation, but there is so much focus on planning for marginalized groups that can include older adults. However, it's not usually called out separately. Danielle argues that we need to first plan for older adults, which will make our communities more resilient overall, because age compounds all other factors that make climate resilience a challenge.
Jennifer Hiatt:And I actually thought that was a really poignant take. Aging is hopefully one of the experiences that we all will have, so it's important to plan for it. Let's get into our conversation with author Daniel Aragoni on the climate resilience for an aging nation.
Stephanie Rouse:Daniel, thank you for joining us on Booked On Planning to talk about your book Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation. A troubling trend in climate fuel disasters like Hurricane Katrina show. Older adults over 65 consistently make up two-thirds or more of the death tolls. Hurricane Katrina was nearly 20 years ago, but we still aren't focusing on older adults when preparing for disaster mitigation plans or during recovery efforts. Why do you think it's taking so long for this to become a?
Danielle Arigoni:priority. First of all, thanks for having me, stephanie and Jennifer. I'm really happy to be here. I wish I knew why it was taking so long. Honestly, I find it troubling myself.
Danielle Arigoni:I'm a planner, educated in the planning field. I've worked kind of on the fringes of planning for 20 plus years in the federal government and nonprofit sector and I think part of it is the reality that we just don't really talk about aging in our planning profession. We tend to think about communities as kind of a monolith, and I think there's certainly more awareness around income differentiations and race and ethnicity, but age is often not discussed in that same context and the thing that that results in is really blind spots, as I have come to think of them as around the needs of older adults, so that when we're designing housing or parks or public transit we're not necessarily thinking about the needs of older adults as being a specific cohort. I think, thanks to ADA and other laws, there's a heightened awareness of people with disabilities and a need to accommodate that.
Danielle Arigoni:But the reality is that aging brings with it kind of a constellation of realities that make it difficult for oftentimes for people to navigate their own communities and certainly for them to age in place. So I think that that compounds sort of why we're at where we're at with these trends. Another reason, frankly, is that there's two kind of siloed approaches to this. There's kind of one group of organizations and institutions that are thinking about how we plan for climate those are the chief resilience officers and the engineers and the climatologists. And then we've got a totally different set that is thinking about preparing for an older, grayer future, and those are the aging advocates and the gerontologists and the demographers, and they don't often talk. They're quite siloed. So I think that's another reason we see these really troubling trends.
Jennifer Hiatt:I actually had an interaction a few years ago with another planner that troubled me a little, not in a bad way, but we were talking with a small town about infrastructure needs and I made the comment that you should start planning your small town around what your grandparents need, because a lot of rural Nebraska at least, is aging.
Danielle Arigoni:Absolutely.
Jennifer Hiatt:Those small towns aren't getting any smaller, and one of the other planners that I was working with they were like well, that seems like it's very backwards looking. I like to talk about how we should plan a community around, how a mom could push a stroller around, and that meets the same requirements. I was like it really doesn't, though, and I think that you know we're God willing, we're all going to be older adults in our future. We don't have as much of that concept of being young and trying to navigate when you're little, so I thought that was just kind of an odd take.
Danielle Arigoni:It is and I think it's honestly pretty reflective Even when we think about economic development strategies. A lot of you know economic development strategies are premised on how do we attract millennials, how do we attract Gen Zs to come and sort of populate our communities. The reality is that the older adult demographic is the fastest growing one, so people over 65 are growing faster than any other age cohort and that we're very close to reaching a tip on point in about 10 years where we're going to have more people over 65 than we will under 18 for the first time ever. And, as you pointed out, many communities are already there Nebraska, rural Nebraska more than a quarter, I imagine, are older adults. There's a story on NPR just this week about Montana where already rural places are more than 25% of their population is people over 60. That's the case in Maine and many other rural communities across the country and frankly, that's where we're headed as a nation.
Danielle Arigoni:So let's plan for that cohort because it is growing, because we will all be there, god willing, as you said, and because when you solve for the needs of older adults you do also solve for the needs of people with other ages. It's kind of the curb cut effect of plan for the stroller, plan, for the walker, plan, for the person in a wheelchair. You benefit all of those groups. But I really do and I've come to believe that when you center the needs of older adults in planning, especially climate resilience planning, it kind of unlocks solutions that there were previously not thought about, not considered and therefore not implemented.
Jennifer Hiatt:Just to put us all on the same page as we go throughout this discussion, can you tell us who you are talking about when you say older adults, because I'm sure everyone has a different demographic in their head? And, interestingly, from your book, why don't we use the term elderly?
Danielle Arigoni:Yeah, you know, the definition of what is an older adult, I think, is one of the most interesting things of this whole discussion and, frankly, I think it's part of why we do overlook older adults in planning, because we can't neatly define them. Everyone knows that a child is someone under 18, but, depending on how you define it, an older adult can be someone over 50 when they start to get their AARP publications and marketing. They can be someone over 55 when they qualify for retirement community, someone over 62 when you can qualify for social security, or 65 when you can apply for Medicare. There's all these different marks. So there is this very nebulous concept of who is an older adult and when do you become one. So I think that in some ways that's fine, right, it doesn't really matter what we decide. But the flip side of that is you can't manage what you can't measure. And if we're not measuring the quantity of people that are in whatever we decide to be as the older adult cohort, then we can't effectively engage them, we can't effectively plan for their needs the cohort then we can't effectively engage them, we can't effectively plan for their needs.
Danielle Arigoni:The reason I don't use the word elderly is because I think it connotes frailty frankly, not always. Obviously there are many elderly people who are not frail, but I think that the image that comes to mind when you hear elderly is someone of physical frailties. And I think one of the most amazing things about the older adult cohort, particularly as it grows, you see this incredible array of ages and abilities within that own cohort. I think about my own mom who's 83 and walks three miles a day and is still a very active real estate agent, kicking butt, doing great stuff. There are other people who are much younger, who have much more difficulty with mobility or navigability, all of these things. So it's a very varied group which just speaks to the term older adults as, I think, being a little bit more expansive and inclusive.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, I'd agree If we were using the term elderly. I wouldn't put my parents in that category just because of the connotations that you kind of described, but they're definitely in the older adult category and is the group that we need to start planning for. Yeah, so much of the work on climate change and preparedness has begun to focus on marginalized group, which tends to include older adults but doesn't really call them out specifically. How does a climate change approach look different when we focus specifically on age, versus just clumping everyone together as a marginalized group?
Danielle Arigoni:I think that we're starting to see some greater awareness within some of the agencies and organizations that are seeking to serve marginalized people. We're seeing some progress in terms of a greater need to identify vulnerable and marginalized populations, an example being FEMA in its most recent guidance around the state hazard mitigation plans. They're moving towards guidance that is more inclusive of vulnerabilities that come from socioeconomic conditions. So that's good. Previously they kind of focused on buildings and hard infrastructure being at risk. They're moving towards a place of what sort of risks emerge when you think about the vulnerabilities of a population.
Danielle Arigoni:But the downside of that sort of clumping together to just say marginalized people is that you really lose the detail around the unique needs of older adults.
Danielle Arigoni:And I think you know if you think about low-income people or you think about people of color, or you think about people with disabilities all of those elements age stacks on top of them.
Danielle Arigoni:So if someone already is living with poor access to healthcare by virtue of them living in a rural community or living in a disinvested community, when you layer on top of that the fact that they're aging, that difference and that differential becomes even more acute.
Danielle Arigoni:Similarly, for someone who is low income Low income people are struggling in many different ways, but as an older adult who's low income, the risk increases because there aren't the sort of job opportunities that maybe there once were. There aren't as many years of earning capacity or capability to save money as there once were. The age risks layer on top of all of those other vulnerabilities, which is why I think it's really essential to kind of tease it out. I think a lot of presuppositions and assumptions get made about vulnerable people and who they are and what they look like, but the reality is that you really need to kind of tease out who lives in your community, what are the actual risks that they face whether it's housing insecurity or limited access to health care or limited access to transportation and start to better define those so that you can work to address them.
Jennifer Hiatt:Kind of in that vein. Another paradigm shift that you talk about in the book is that we need to shift from the default focus of individual disaster preparedness to providing resources on community or group preparedness, and Lincoln actually just experienced this. Last week we had a massive windstorm that came through. It knocked out a bunch of power and I thought our community did a pretty good job in that it put out information of, like you know, please go here, these are places. Then Stephanie and I talked about how, like, the library closes at seven. So even though the library was one of the places where you should go, you didn't have a place all night and a lot of the conversation started focusing around oh man, we should be like buying generators from our house, and it was an interesting microcosm of reading this book and then having a little mini disaster happen all at the same time. What would this look like and how can communities start to begin sourcing those resources now, because obviously it's just getting worse and worse?
Danielle Arigoni:It is. Yeah, the need for this shift is is really urgent. You know, I think as Americans we're very sort of individualistic and very, you know, sort of we could do it ourselves, and in many ways that's a really great trait of Americans. I think the downside of that is that there's a lot of assumptions that people can't or are able to prepare equally, and the reality is that, again, older adults often can't. You know, we think about someone who lives on a fixed income. It's really hard for them to stockpile two weeks of food and medicine or to buy an air conditioner.
Danielle Arigoni:Just this morning I was looking into portable air conditioners for a family friend of ours who's in her 80s was in a mobile home. It gets really really really dangerously hot in her home and she did not have the wherewithal to go drop 500 bucks on a portable air conditioner. That's the reality for a lot of people. So when you think about individual preparedness and well, everybody can do it for themselves there's a lot of limitations to that. Think about someone who lives with dementia. Think about someone who has more urgent needs in terms of caregiving for someone who's at home, whether it's a spouse or an adult child with a disability or any of those other responsibilities. It just there's a lot of, I think, false expectations around what people can do to be prepared, and oftentimes what I kind of saw in my research is that a lot of the people who died in Hurricane Ian and other disasters it's not that they hadn't prepared, it's that there were really unrealistic expectations about what it means to be prepared and what is the role of that social safety net that people count on that all of a sudden dissipates when emergencies strike.
Danielle Arigoni:So how do we shift to more of a sort of communal, interdependent way of thinking about preparedness? I really lean into the sort of community resilience frame and I think about it as a safety net, think about it as that web of connection that we know activates in times of disaster. Every community that has experienced something the one you just described in Lincoln, many others. You hear these amazing stories of neighbors helping neighbors and people coming together to support one another so that energy is there. What's missing is the structure to bring people together to do that before the disaster strikes, and I think that there's a lot of mechanisms already in place that have the potential to harness that energy.
Danielle Arigoni:But again, it starts with a singular goal, which is we're aiming to reduce risk for older adults in our community, and we're going to do that now and tomorrow and the next day and we're not going to wait until the disaster strikes.
Danielle Arigoni:So some of the groups that I think are really well positioned to do that are groups like the Area Agencies on Aging, which often act at a county level and provide supports to seniors, to older adults in the community, delivered meals on wheels. Usually they think about transportation and mobility needs. They have an infrastructure in place already that is connected to older adults where they're at at a really granular level. But I can't tell you the number of planners I've talked to that have never heard of an area agency on aging. It's just not a natural partner that we think about sort of from the land use side and it needs to be like we need to be making those connections now. I would say I don't come from the emergency response world but I would harbor the similar bet that many of them are not familiar with area agencies on aging.
Jennifer Hiatt:I wasn't before I started at the city. I've been a planner for 10 years before I came here, and it wasn't until I started here and they're under or partner with our department that I was like oh, that's a thing.
Danielle Arigoni:Okay, isn't it fascinating? Exactly and again, I think part of it's because they're often at the county level and many planners work at the city level, but for any number of reasons there's that real disconnect. Another mechanism I think that's like super powerful is the age-friendly network. You know the age-friendly framework and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more. But when I was at AARP I worked there for five years as a director of livable communities the flagship program for AARP was something called the Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities, and what that does is it invites communities to establish a partnership of diverse stakeholders with the goal in mind of making that community whether it's a city, a town, a hamlet, a county, a state more age-friendly, a better place for people to age. And that sort of framework is really valuable and useful for again making those connections and starting to think about how we deploy community resilience for older adults.
Stephanie Rouse:So Lincoln just became an age-friendly community through the AARP network in January. That's great, yeah, so it's comprised of, I think, eight or nine different city departments or directors are all on the committee and I'm not sure where they're at in the plan that they need to develop, but we're starting down the path of becoming the age-friendly community here in Lincoln.
Danielle Arigoni:That's awesome, and what I think you'll find if you haven't already is it's a really great table to invite other partners to as well, whether it's universities or health centers or even villages, which are sort of kind of informal networks that are established to support older adults who want to age in place. It becomes a really, I think, flexible and versatile table to bring diverse folks together, and it holds a lot of promise, I think, for being able to do this kind of work. Yeah.
Stephanie Rouse:I'm excited to see where it goes. You also discuss the disability inclusive disaster risk reduction framework that started in Australia in the book. Between these two, have you found a specific framework that's easier for communities to implement, that focuses on both aging and climate resilience?
Danielle Arigoni:Yeah, I think it almost doesn't matter what framework you use. I think and again I'll invoke sort of the reflections I have from being at AARP Some communities come to this work because they're thinking about the needs of people who live in their community with dementia. So they'll utilize a dementia planning framework to really think about how do people with dementia thrive in their community. So, whether you're coming at it from any one of those frameworks or others, I think the important thing is to sort of establish a common goal, which is that we value and we intend to create a place that works better for older adults, and we recognize that in doing so you are helping people with disabilities, you are helping people of all ages, you are helping people of different language abilities and different internet access. There's a whole bunch of sort of vectors that flow from that, that when you center the needs of older adults and the realities of their experience again, you kind of unlock solutions that benefit other groups.
Danielle Arigoni:So I have a personal affinity for the AARP Age-Friendly Framework. Having worked on it for a while, I don't think that many communities yet have centered climate through that process. There's a great opportunity to do so, however, and one of the tools that we were able to put out while I was still. There was something called the Disaster Resilience Toolkit that was co-branded by AARP and FEMA, and it serves as kind of a roadmap for age-friendly communities to really think about how you might better prepare for disasters. So I think that's a great starting point. There's a lot more to be done, because the impacts of climate change are increasingly evident outside of disasters as well.
Jennifer Hiatt:So I feel like we've already touched on this a little bit, but there are just so many groups working tangentially trying to pull all that together. I think one of the best things that planners can do is see dispersed networks and then bring them into one. So what would you say is something that planners could advocate for to bring together or like centralized information systems and ensure that disaster communication is clear and available to everyone in their community. So I was thinking, like our tornado alerts or whatever went off, but like if you're hard of hearing, how are you supposed to know that the tornado is coming?
Jennifer Hiatt:So, how can planners be a tool to bring all of these groups together and communicate effectively?
Danielle Arigoni:I do think you're right that planners sit at a really unique intersection between those two kind of silos that I talked about the sort of climate and emergency response planning and the aging planning. It requires planners recognizing that there's an aging planning effort underway and bringing them in. But I do think that planners can play an incredibly valuable role here. I'll be honest, the reality is that there isn't any one group, I would say, that yet has sort of seized on this intersection of climate and aging.
Danielle Arigoni:I think because it is so multi-sectoral in some ways it almost kind of falls between the cracks, like no one sees it as 100% in their bailiwick, and so no one has kind of like grabbed onto it and said we're going to make sure that everybody knows about this.
Danielle Arigoni:I think, frankly, apa could be that group right, like they could be the ones to say, as planners, we have the commitment to ensuring that we're both planning for our climate future and that we are doing so with eyes wide open about demographic change and really driving this message in a pretty strong way. And the other thing is, I would say, is that you know, there's a real opportunity for climate affiliated groups and for aging advocates to sort of champion this issue. But, yeah, I do think planners sit at a really valuable intersection and every planning document that someone touches, whether it's a housing plan or a consolidated plan, comprehensive plan, transportation plan, infrastructure plan, all of those, I really believe that they would be made better by asking and answering the question how does this reduce risk for older adults in the face of climate change? Because I guarantee you there are opportunities in every single one of those plans, and more, to do so, but you're not going to get that result unless you ask that question.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, with our comprehensive plan for the city of Lincoln, Lancaster County, we address climate change and we reference our climate action plan and there's a focus there and we briefly kind of touch on planning for older adults in the current 2050. Every five years we do an update and so there is going to be a bigger focus on planning for aging residents in the community and I think I'll kind of push breaking those silos down and making it more of a joint conversation between climate and planning for older adults.
Danielle Arigoni:Yeah, that's exactly what's needed. You know, in the book I talk about the state of New York as being a real laboratory and case study for this work. You know, state of New York. I know that Nebraskans probably don't like to be compared to New York you know it's not really.
Danielle Arigoni:They're like it's not relevant. But the point of this is relevant is that New York, on the one hand, is a real leader in climate. They have very ambitious goals and a very ambitious climate action plan at the state level. They're also a real leader on commitment to age-friendly growth and age-friendly development. They're the first state to join the AARP network.
Danielle Arigoni:However, their multi-sector plan for aging and their climate action plan are wholly divorced. They are not connected. I don't think there are even dotted lines that connect them. Again, it chafes me a little bit, because I see the connection points.
Danielle Arigoni:For example, a community that develops a climate action plan that says we're going to invest in more renewable energy, we're going to make sure our housing stock is more climate resilient and more energy efficient. That's fantastic. That's exactly the direction we need to go. But those activities and those tasks and those tactics could be prioritizing older adults, not just because they help people who need the help the most, who have the most utility cost burden, who are more at risk because of their health to extreme heat, but in so doing, you'd also be, first of all, meeting people really where they have the needs.
Danielle Arigoni:I mean this work of making homes more energy efficient and bringing in renewable energy is pretty daunting for anyone. It's really daunting for older adults, particularly those who lack savings. But when you do that, you're also starting to convert the housing stock in ways that benefit not just that particular homeowner but the future residents. So let's center older adults in all of the summer sort of climate planning that we're thinking about and at the same time let's really examine the climate risks that come from our aging plan. Have more mobility in their community, because we know that they outlive their ability to drive anywhere from seven to 10 years or longer. Then let's think about climate neutral solutions or climate beneficial solutions to doing that Investing in public transit, investing in walkable and bikeable communities. You can achieve a lot of sort of dual goals by focusing on that intersection.
Stephanie Rouse:So in the book you identify 25 strategies and six categories for age-friendly resilience, covering energy, housing, mobility, social infrastructure, education and emergency management. We, like, I'm sure, many communities, excel in a few of these areas, but we leave some others pretty stagnant or don't address them. How can communities better act on each of these areas to ensure a more holistic approach to age-friendly resilience?
Danielle Arigoni:act on each of these areas to ensure a more holistic approach to age-friendly resilience. I think it really starts with identifying who older adults are and where they live. When I do talks on the book, I often ask audiences how many people do you think live in congregate facilities? What percentage of older adults do you think live in congregate facilities? And many people will say like 40%, 20%. The reality is that 2% of older adults live in congregate facilities. 98% of them live in the community and of those, about 30% live alone.
Danielle Arigoni:So I think you know, whether it's housing or transportation or health or utilities, you have to really start by grounding yourself in where older adults live and what are the challenges that they confront, whether it's housing and the cost of housing, particularly now that housing is growing more expensive because utilities and insurance are rising really rapidly.
Danielle Arigoni:We know that that is leading to more older adults who are housing cost burdened than ever before. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, that's 50% of renters older renters are housing cost burdened and a quarter of older homeowners. So this is not just a renter's problem and homeowners are fine. No more people are housing cost burdened than ever before among older adults, and so, whether you're thinking about housing or transportation or any of those other sectors. I think it really starts in like grounding yourself in the realities of how older adults are living today and with the experiences that they have today, and not assuming that because we've planned for the nursing homes and because we've planned for the assisted living facilities, we're good. That's great, but that reaches a very few of the older adult population.
Jennifer Hiatt:Although you're probably right that Nebraska does not like to be compared to New York, you do have multiple case studies, and case studies are very helpful showing what communities are doing right. So what are one or two of your favorite examples for something that you think is going well in the climate resilience planning arena?
Danielle Arigoni:The good news is, the more I talk to groups, the more great examples I hear you know of innovative work that's happening at the local level. But from the book, two of my favorites that I like to lift up are one City of Portland, which I know people sometimes roll their eyes because City of Portland, you know, and sustainability always get mentioned. But City of Portland and the county of Multnomah, multnomah County, in which City of Portland resides, have really done some interesting work around both age-friendly planning and sort of climate resilience planning. So in 2021, the Pacific Northwest endured some pretty dramatic heat waves that led to a thousand people dying and in Multnomah County the average age was 67. So they recognized that this was something that was disproportionately impacting their older adults. They were able to, by virtue of the pre-existing partnership between the city and county and because of their prior commitment to being an age-friendly community, they were able to sort of leverage county and city apparatus, if you will, to respond to those heat waves. What they did was they kind of repurposed a network that had been established during COVID to reach older adults in their homes through sort of trusted neighborhood organizations often that were very sort of culturally relevant and culturally trusted, so that people weren't fearful when you come knocking on the door with a great idea or something to offer them. These were groups that were already known and trusted and they paired that with a program to deploy portable air conditioning units and they prioritized households that were lived in or headed by older adults, that were low income and that had people with disabilities in them. They did that in a way that kind of overcame all the hurdles that older adults might experience in taking steps to cool their homes, because many Northwest homes are not filled with air conditioning. And that program continues today. The air conditioning is installed for free, it's done by people who are trusted and known and it meets ultra-adult to where they're at, which is in their homes. So I love that example and I love that it continues year over year.
Danielle Arigoni:The other one I love talking about is an activity that was born out of New Orleans and it's led by a group called Together New Orleans and this kind of emerged, as New Orleans is just the front lines and the punching bag, honestly, in the US for climate change time and time again, and it's been interesting, I think, as they would say, to see their own shift in how they respond. You know, 20 years ago the response was evacuate let's get people out of harm's way. We know now that, and they recognize that that brings other risks for older adults who can't access medical care, for whom their lives are disrupted in a pretty significant way, and many other reasons why evacuation is no longer the response of choice. Instead, they help people to shelter in place and in doing that, they recognize that one of the most common side effects or byproducts of these disasters is what you just described, jennifer, of these blackouts, right Power outages for days or weeks. So they are seeing and in fact we continue to see. Just recently I read an article about Hurricane Beryl and some of the deaths in Texas that resulted from the power outages there, in which predictably three quarters of the people who died were older adults.
Danielle Arigoni:New Orleans recognized that and said we need to figure this out. And what they did is they came up with a very sort of community-driven response, which is to create something called community lighthouses throughout the city and actually I think it's extending beyond New Orleans as well and these community lighthouses are often installed in community serving facilities, whether health centers, churches, senior centers, things like that. They include solar panels churches, senior centers, things like that. They include solar panels, backup storage, basic necessities, food, water. They serve as a gathering point for people in times of crisis, cooling centers when they're needed, warming centers when they're needed.
Danielle Arigoni:But the thing that makes them really special is that they are meant to serve a very fixed area, and the volunteers associated with that community lighthouse go out and knock on the doors regularly for all the people in that service area to make sure that they're known ahead of time and to make sure that they really understand what older adults' needs are, so that they don't have to worry about can they show up at the lighthouse with a pet, or can they show up and get their oxygen machine plugged in.
Danielle Arigoni:They know that their needs are already understood and they've established that relationship ahead of time. So it's the dual task of creating the infrastructure but pairing that with the sort of social resilience that goes along with it, and I think in doing that they solve for one of the challenges that I've heard in other situations around community resilience hubs, which is people who build a great resilience hub. They have this great cooling center, but they haven't asked the question of how are people going to get here, and so that really leaves people who don't drive high and dry and unable to access those services, whereas the community lighthouses in New Orleans are all within walking distance.
Jennifer Hiatt:It's interesting that you mentioned places that don't generally have air conditioning. I just spent the weekend in Canada and on my perspective, I was escaping some hot weather. In Nebraska we got to 105. But up there we actually reached 90 and had no way to deal with that. It was incredibly hot, there were no air conditioners and then it rained and it never gets to 90 in August up there and it never rains in August up there. In four days experience that and the area that we were at was actually somewhat older people and they were just like what are we even going to do? And just fanning themselves and I was like get air conditioners, my Atlanta, but it's not that simple. It's not that simple to retrofit a house with air conditioning or bring in portable air conditioners. It's very challenging.
Danielle Arigoni:Exactly, and I think you know again, there are any number of barriers for people to do that. First of all, dropping 500 bucks, getting to the.
Danielle Arigoni:Home Depot, picking it up, installing it. You know, you think literally about older adults, particularly those who are older. Older adults have difficulty moving heavy equipment. I mean this is we can't assume that any of this stuff is easy. For many it is, but not for all. And then the other thing that is really difficult increasingly is just utility costs and what that's going to mean for electricity bills. I read a report recently that said something like 7 million people older adults, routinely go without food or medicine or to pay their utility bills. So utility costs are already a really, really hard and, I think, untold part of the economic crisis. Utilities are difficult to manage and I think we often forget about that. So even the presumption that you can just plug in an air conditioner and be good to go a lot of people might not do that because they can't afford the increase in their utility bills that will follow.
Stephanie Rouse:So I really like the community lighthouse example and it gets to three themes that I kind of picked up on in your book, which are communication, collaboration and coordination For communities that haven't started down the path of climate resilience planning or age-friendly designations. Who should be the one starting this conversation and you kind of touched on this earlier a little bit but the groups that are key to starting this work with focusing on resilience for an aging nation, I think there's really a role for all sectors here.
Danielle Arigoni:I mean, I think the leadership can come from any one of them. It could come from the Department of Emergency Management, or from the Area Agency on Aging, or from the Senior Center, or from the Health Department, or from the Planning Department. It can really come from any one of those sectors. Ideally, it would integrate people from all of those sectors and more. It would include the utilities, who have a lot of capabilities to lighten the load, if you will, for older adults and encourage energy efficiency incentives and payment plans and things like that. It would include transportation folks, who can be more thoughtful about not just designing public transit systems but ensuring that stops are shaded and have seating, because, again, on that 105 degree day or whatever, jennifer, that you mentioned, in Lincoln, someone who maybe is a regular bus rider might not go out and stand in the sun for 10 minutes waiting for the bus. They need shade, they need a place to sit.
Danielle Arigoni:This is again, that's, an example of one of those sort of age layering on top of other risks that warrants a little bit more consideration For housing folks.
Danielle Arigoni:If they're coming at this as sort of leading the charge, this is a real opportunity to advocate for more housing choice in the community, for the construction of smaller, denser, more tightly connected homes that reduce energy costs because they're smaller and maybe have some shared walls so you're not paying quite as much for heating and cooling.
Danielle Arigoni:But the other thing about different housing modalities other than single family detached, is that it fosters more of a social network that lets people kind of check on each other informally and we know that makes a difference in saving lives. We knew that since 1995 when Eric Kleinenberg researched the Chicago heat wave and he really pointed a spotlight on the importance of connectedness and protecting people. So I think all of those groups and more can lead. I would say I'll go back to that question of anyone can ask and answer the question how does this activity, this policy, this program reduce risk for older adults in the face of climate change? And that needs to be just part and parcel of how we all do our work going forward. So I would say that's kind of a really clear consideration that anyone listening can ask themselves and frankly, to bring up at those meetings with colleagues when you're making decisions.
Jennifer Hiatt:Understanding that communities aren't really quite as far along as they should be in assisting older adults, not to put it back to that personal individual readiness. But what is one piece of advice you would give someone who is listening, who is either an older adult themselves or has an older adult in their family, to make sure that they are preparing for disaster to the best of their individual abilities?
Danielle Arigoni:Yeah, it's both right. I don't mean to suggest at all that individuals have no role we obviously do. We all have to play a role here but that community resilience kind of web or social network behind is so important. But I think what you can do at an individual level is to see if there's a special needs registry in your community. Oftentimes these exist, but maybe not well publicized, and what that means is that you can sort of self-identify to your emergency management group team office as an older adult, as someone who needs additional help.
Danielle Arigoni:Frankly, I don't think you need to be an older adult to sign up for these things I'm quite sure you don't. But it might be helpful for people who don't drive anymore or who have physical limitations or who live with dementia to make themselves known and make their unique needs known to people who they might then turn to for support in times of disaster. That helps everyone. That puts them on the radar screen. I don't know the degree to which this is happening, but I think lists like that can also be really useful for utilities as they think about where to prioritize power restoration. If you are someone who lives with in-home medical equipment on which you rely, you need to be on that list for priority reinstatement of power, and whether that means reaching out to the utility directly or going through your emergency management department, I think those are two things that people can do proactively.
Stephanie Rouse:And as this is booked on planning, in addition to your book, which we recommend everyone get a copy of, what books would you recommend our readers check out?
Danielle Arigoni:Well, thank you. Yeah, love for people to read this. Two other books I personally love and think really highly of. Both of them are out of Island Press, which is the publishing house that did this book. That helped me bring this book to life.
Danielle Arigoni:One is called Understanding Disaster Insurance New Tools for a More Resilient Future by Carolyn Kowski. It really kind of unpacks the insurance industry in ways I think are totally fascinating and describes just how important insurance is as a safety net for people from their financial standpoint and how inadequate it is. Frankly, insurance is radically changing in many parts of the country, growing ever more expensive, sometimes disappearing altogether as insurance agencies leave, and understanding the market that kind of drives those decisions I think is really interesting and what it sort of portends for our future. The other one that I am enamored of is called when Driving is Not an Option by Anna Ziverts. It is honestly super eye-opening in terms of understanding mobility needs for people.
Danielle Arigoni:She is a vision impaired activist in Seattle area, she's a transportation advocate, she's a total powerhouse and she really thoughtfully gathers information from both the Seattle area and from across the country to sort of channel the experience of non-drivers. And this can be for any number of reasons for economic reasons, for reasons of disability, for reasons of choice. She estimates that as much as 30% of any community is a non-driver. But we don't plan for them very well, we really don't. I always chuckle when she'll post on social media you know, job announcements by the Department of Transportation in that area that serve public transit that say driver's license is required. She's like this is ironic, like what's going on. So, anyway, I highly recommend that book and following Anna Zeeberts and Carolyn Kowski.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, we have Anna's book on our schedule to do early next year, because I listened to a webinar where she was part of a panel and she's just has such good insight and I think it really opens your eye to a new perspective, totally.
Danielle Arigoni:And super accessible to like. It's really easy to understand, not overly technical.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, danielle, thank you again for joining us on Book John Planning to talk about your book Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation.
Danielle Arigoni:Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you both.
Jennifer Hiatt:We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Danielle Aragoni on her book Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation. You can get your own copy through the publisher at Island Press, or click the link in the show notes to take you directly to our affiliate page. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you.
