Communities Struggle to Care for Elderly, Alone at Home

The other "Home Alone."

At the Wall Street Journal, "More people age at home, raising demand for support services":

STOCKHOLM, Maine—At least three times a night during much of the long, harsh northern winter, Aldea Campbell gets out of bed, steps into her slippers, and descends a flight of frighteningly steep, narrow wooden stairs to the cellar to fill her wood-burning stove. She’s 82, a widow, and has lived in her 102-year-old house near the Canadian border for almost six decades.

She burns wood because she can’t afford enough oil to get through the cold months. When her arthritis is bad, she gingerly maneuvers the steps sideways to keep from falling. But still, she slipped on the stairs twice last year, once badly hurting her tailbone. “It happened so fast,” she said.

Such predicaments are increasingly common in Maine: the grayest, most rural state in the U.S., with housing among the oldest in the nation. Maine has another distinction: it is among the first states to experience challenges from a growing number of seniors who are “aging in place”—remaining independent rather than relocating to nursing homes or moving in with grown children.

More elderly across the nation are aging at home for a variety of reasons: they prefer to and are healthy enough to stay; they can’t afford other options such as assisted living; and states in some cases have imposed policies to limit nursing home stays paid for by Medicaid, which is a major funder of long-term institutional health care for older Americans.

But aging in place is proving difficult in places where the population is growing older, supportive services are scarce, houses are in disrepair and younger people who can assist have moved away. As a result, elderly people who live at home are having to rely more on neighbors—who sometimes are elderly, too—and local nonprofits and public agencies are starting to feel the strain from increasing requests for help.

“It’s a huge issue—it couldn’t be bigger,” said Lenard Kaye, director of the University of Maine Center on Aging. “Ninety-nine percent of older adults say they want to stay right where they are until they’ve taken their last breath, but that doesn’t mean they are continuing to remain safe and remain well.”

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