Age-Friendly Communities

Consumer Advocates for RCFE Reform (CARR) works to improve the quality of  residential care facilities for the elderly (RCFE)  by making public RCFE records and reports easier to find, search and understand. This recent article in Senior Housing and Care Journal provides an excellent introduction to the data issues involved in reviewing these facilities, as does CARR’s final report to the county for the rating system pilot program.

For this data project, we will be collecting data to analyze the capacity and affordability of San Diego’s assisted living industry, considering the anticipated need for these services over the next 30 years.  The goal is to to identify those communities in San Diego experiencing the greatest difficulty finding and affording assisted living care services. 

This project will use regional Census data, San Diego’s 211 intake records, SANDAG data, and data from California’s Departments of Health Care Services and Social Services. The analysis from the project will reveal the ability of those 65 and over to afford lifetime average assisted living expenditures of $4,000/month for three years.   Of particular interest for this program would be identifying communities with high concentrations of low-income seniors and the availability (or lack thereof) of Assisted Living Medicaid Waiver Program (ALWP) beds within the immediate community.

A good place to start for data is the County’s Aging and Independence Services website, but in the kick off meeting will will identify many other sources of data that we should consider and analyze.

Joining The Project

If you’d like to join the project, see the list of items under “Joining a Project”  on the main project list page.