Posts tagged help
Washington Village Progress Report for Nobo North Boulder
Mar 9th
-Steven Toot, VP of Construction
SENIOR COHOUSING:
Establishing a Healthy, Sustainable Lifestyle for an Aging Generation
by Chuck Durrett
Last year Americans drove 5 billion miles caring for seniors in their homes (Meals on Wheels, Whistle Stop Nurses, and so on). In our small, semi-rural county in the Sierra foothills, Telecare made 60,000 trips in massive, lumbering, polluting vans-buses – usually carrying only one senior at a time – schlepping a couple thousand seniors total over hill and dale to doctor’s appointments, to pick up medicine, or to see friends. In our cohousing community of 21 seniors, I have never seen a single Telecare bus in the driveway. In cohousing it happens organically by caring neighbors: “Can I catch a ride with you?”; “Are you headed to the drug store?”, etc. And this alternative is much more fun and inexpensive for all involved, and much less damaging to the environment. Wolf Creek Lodge, a new senior cohousing community under construction, has 30 units on 1 acre within walking distance of downtown Grass Valley, CA. population 12,000. Top of mind, one future household will be moving from a 20 acre lot, 9 miles from town, another from 15 acres, also 9 miles out of town, and another from 13 acres, 7 miles from town. These are young seniors planning not only to live more sustainably, but more fulfilling as well.
Bill Thomas, M.D. and prominent author on issues affecting seniors, describes our currently predominant scenario of caring for seniors as the “$3 trillion dollar dilemma.” The cost of care for the 78 million new senior/baby boomers “coming of age” in the next 20 years will be $3 trillion dollars more per year than it is now (and that is in a nation with a $13 trillion dollar GDP – to put it into perspective). It goes without saying, that the current pattern is not sustainable from an environmental, cultural or financial point of view.
President Obama has announced that for us to arrest global warming, we will have to reduce carbon emissions by 2% per year until 2050. It seems doable, but last year, carbon emissions increased by 1.4% – we are headed in the wrong direction. Given this situation, we’ve got to do something. We need to think collectively about how to set seniors up for success and to help them achieve their full potential into their last 20-30 years and how to set the environment up for success at the same time. Cohousing is for seniors who want to be a part of the solution.
SENIOR COHOUSING WORKSHOP APRIL 11-15, 2011
Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living, second edition published by New Society Publishers (www.newsociety.com) – and the type of communities it describes and helps to create – allows seniors to live lightly on the planet and to enhance their quality of life at the same time.
County awarded grant from Colorado Health Foundation to help with medical insurance for children and families
Mar 2nd
The grant – to be paid over the next two years – benefits the Boulder County Healthy Kids initiative, a countywide effort to enroll pregnant women and eligible children and their families in Medicaid and the Child Health Plan Plus, and to connect those families to the appropriate care.
“The initiative, which was created in 2008, supports Boulder County’s commitment to improve access to affordable physical, mental and dental health care services for its most vulnerable residents,” project manager Christina Ostrom said. “Funding from the Colorado Health Foundation will provide streamlined access to families.”
Boulder County Healthy Kids will partner with the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts to increase access to health benefits by stationing an eligibility technician at each district. The tech will help screen and enroll students and their families in Medicaid and CHP Plus health coverage.
Please call the Healthy Kids hotline at 303-441-1589 for more information and eligibility standards, or to refer an uninsured child.
Medicaid is a no-cost health insurance plan for low-income Colorado children, pregnant women, parents with dependent children, and elderly or disabled populations. CHP Plus is low-cost health insurance for Colorado’s uninsured children and pregnant women without private health insurance but whose household income is too high to qualify for Medicaid.
The Colorado Health Foundation works to increase the number of Coloradans with health insurance, ensuring they have access to quality, coordinated care and encouraging healthy living. The foundation invests in communities through initiatives and grants to health-related nonprofit organizations, and by operating medical education programs to increase the health care workforce. Visit www.coloradohealth.org for more information.
Deadline approaching for public input to Community Wildfire Protection Plan
Jan 6th
The deadline for submitting recommendations and signing up for the Advisory Team is Wednesday, Jan. 12. Guidelines and submission forms are available at www.BoulderCountyCWPP.org.
“We have already received many important recommendations from residents on our website,” said Jim Webster, Community Wildfire Protection Planner in the Boulder County Land Use Department. “However, we know there are others who have come up with noteworthy ideas during this past year that have not yet shared their recommendations.”
Topics of the recommendations received to date include improving communication, planning evacuation and access routes, educating the public on wildfire mitigation, installing fire danger signs, collecting slash, funding fire suppression, and declaring and enforcing county fire bans.
“After this past year, not many initiatives are of equal importance,” Advisory Team member Kitty Stevenson said. “It is really exciting to see a community plan being developed on a larger countywide scale. It is important that people from all parts of Boulder County participate.”