By Gene Krebs. I attended yesterday's Columbus Metropolitan Club meeting that was supposed to feature Kathy Lawler, who was going to speak on the impact of the built environment on the aging population. She was unable to attend due to the Snow-pocalypse of Atlanta. Instead they had a panel moderated by Chester Jourdan of MORPC made up of area experts on aging. The panelists included Marilyn Brown, Franklin County Commissioner; Linda Mauger, OSU gerontology; Linda Artis, Senior Independence and Cindy Farson, Central Ohio Aging.
They discussed that when seniors age, society needs to provide opportunities for mobility other than cars. The demographics are against Ohio, especially in rural counties, as up to 20% of their population will be above 65 years-old very soon.
One of the panelists mentioned that Franklin County used to have a program for “group homes” for senior citizens, but it had to be cut due to budget constraints, and we needed to find funding for this again. A nice young man was then brought to the microphone that actually has a business based on creating these group homes, proving that free enterprise will step in in many cases when the public sector bows out.
Kathy Lawler will be back on March 2nd and it should be a good program. Go to the CMC's website for more details; it is open to the public.