February 3, 2022
Governor Kathy Hochul’s Executive State Budget includes unprecedented supports for New York’s 4.6 million older adults and their families, establishing a new era of opportunity for people as they age.
In the Executive Budget and State of the State message, the Governor proposes a comprehensive Master Plan for Aging which builds on New York’s commitment to age-friendly principles and initiatives across eight domains of livability formally established by AARP and the World Health Organization who together recognized New York as the first state in the nation to receive the AARP/WHO Age-Friendly designation.
The Master Plan for Aging framework provides an opportunity for a coordinated and comprehensive approach that spans traditional service, infrastructure, and program boundaries to achieve results for older New Yorkers and all residents in New York.
Core Aging Services Supports Through NYSOFA
The Governor’s Executive Budget continues $23 million to support additional service capacity through NYSOFA programs. It also invests $6 million to support the aging services workforce, $2.9 million to combat social isolation, and $750,000 to expand bill-payer programs that combat elder abuse and financial exploitation in up to ten counties.
These proposals recognize — and seek to broaden — several innovations forged by NYSOFA in the pandemic to connect more older New Yorkers with friends, family, and other supports while bolstering NYSOFA’s longstanding role in elder justice initiatives.
Age-Friendly Domain: Community and Health Services
The Governor has advanced a comprehensive plan to increase the availability of community-based options that allow older adults to age in place with home care while also securing alternatives for individuals whose needs require higher levels of care. These bold initiatives address head-on the many workforce recruitment-and-retention challenges in health care, along with programmatic changes to improve service delivery for older adults.
Key features of the Governor’s budget and State of the State plan include:
- $10 billion workforce investment in health care, long term care, home care and human services.
- Alternatives to nursing homes by investing in supportive housing, developing and preserving affordable housing, creating a standard definition of “memory care,” and creating alternatives to nursing homes such as developing Greenhouse models.
- Strengthening the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, which serves as an advocate for residents and their families in nursing homes and other facilities.
- Expanding and strengthening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) access to farmers markets and continued funding for Nourish NY to support the emergency food networks and provide vital nutrition support for low-income New Yorkers and older adults.
- A disaster recovery and resiliency unit to help rebuild people’s homes. Older adults are especially impacted by the financial toll and trauma caused by disasters. The Governor’s plan will help older adults — and New Yorkers of all ages — get the resources they need quickly and efficiently to restore their lives in the wake of a disaster.
Age-Friendly Domain: Housing
Most people want to remain in their own home and community as they age. Doing so is possible if housing is designed or modified for aging-in-place and a community has affordable housing options for varying life stages.
Among other housing proposals, Governor Hochul is advancing a five-year $25 billion plan to create/preserve: 100,000 affordable homes in urban/rural areas; 10,000 homes with support services for vulnerable populations; and $300 million to preserve or build new senior housing.
Age-Friendly Domain: Work and Civic Engagement
Older adults contribute greatly to the economic life of their communities. They are also often the most reliable and dedicated employees. Approximately 935,000 individuals aged 60 and over provide 495 million hours of community service at an economic value of $13.8 billion. Older adults also contribute approximately $1.8 trillion in federal, state and local taxes. Governor Hochul’s plan supports the work, civic engagement, and economic life of older adults, including:
- A proposed Homeowner Tax Rebate Credit that will provide low- and middle-income homeowners, as well as older-adult homeowners, with a rebate in the fall of 2022 to offset property taxes at a one-time state cost of $2.2 billion.
- Making SUNY and CUNY a leader in adult education.
- Waiving the income cap on retired teachers to encourage them to come back to teaching to address the teacher shortage.
- Investing in student debt assistance that will help older adult borrowers.
- A billion-dollar plan to assist small businesses, which are started and operated by older adults more than any other age group.
Age-Friendly Domain: Outdoor Spaces and Buildings
Investing in infrastructure and services in downtowns and public spaces ensures that those areas will be great places to live, work, and age. Governor Hochul’s plan will create world-class green spaces, enhance and improve the park system for better health, and fund the sixth round of Downtown Revitalization Grants, which have stimulated changes that make communities more attractive places for older adults to live.
Age-Friendly Domain: Transportation
Governor Hochul’s plan includes $32.8 billion for major improvements to critical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, downtowns, towns and hamlets, rail and other infrastructure that are essential to age-friendly communities, enhancing safety and access to motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians and users of all abilities and ages.
Age-Friendly Domain: Communication
Reliable Internet access is a modern necessity — for access to telehealth care, basic services like online banking, and social networking. Yet gaps in broadband access have created entirely new forms of disparity, including for older adults who are already susceptible to social isolation in the pandemic.
The Governor’s budget includes $1.6 billion to support the ConnectALL initiative to provide affordable broadband access to New Yorkers in rural and urban areas statewide.
Age-Friendly Domain: Respect and Social Inclusion
Sixty-three percent of New York’s veterans are over the age of 60. To support all of York’s veterans, regardless of age, Governor Hochul will increase the minimum annual state funding for county and city veterans’ service agencies from $10,000 each to $25,000 each — a 150 percent increase — while expanding support programs, like New York’s Veterans’ FreshConnect Program, which provides additional funds to SNAP beneficiaries for farm market and farm stand purchases, and the continued rollout of Veterans’ Welcome Center Kiosks.