Coverage of aging is supported in part by AARP Arizona
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Many cities across the Valley are seeing an increasing number of older individuals becoming homeless. And with summer heat on the way, it’s important to find ways to keep this population safe.
Lindsey Balinkie is with the city of Mesa. She oversees the office of homeless solutions.
"Over the last three years, we've had about 11% of our clients served there have been 62 and older. Today, we're at about 23%," Balinkie said.
Many are tipping over into homelessness for the first time,
"We're seeing a lot of older women as old as, you know, 72 to 80-85 that are again, you know, coming into this for the very first time, very scared," she said.
And struggling. Summer heat doesn’t help. Balinkie says Mesa is expanding the capacity of its day respite center.
"So it's doubling in size to be able to serve more individuals, including seniors," she said.
And for those seniors who are housed, the city is connecting them to programs to help fix broken or malfunctioning air-conditioners.
Mesa is also looking at data from the last four years showing where heat-related deaths occurred.
"And we're doing a lot of targeted outreach to those areas to make sure that people are aware of the services that are available, that may be able to assist them and, and getting the word out through all of our faith-based communities and our nonprofit partners," Balinkie said.
