Among many of our accomplishments, we are excited about the work of the Housing and Homeless Policy Action Team! After almost 3 years of existence, the PAT has spent the last three months in a strategic planning process to redefine our mission, vision, goals and objectives. Our strength has been in reacting, responding to, and inserting the needs of older adults into the many policies that are being created locally within Measure H, Measure HHH, and the LA County Homeless Initiative. And as a result of our strategic planning process, we look forward to a proactive housing and homeless policy approach in 2020!

To date, we’ve tracked and impacted matching policies, prioritization policies, funding recommendations, and have even been successful in the co-creation of over 7 pilots serving older adults currently underway within DHS, APS, DOA, DPSS, LAHSA and more! We’ve earned a seat at the table of the LA County homeless Initiative’s older adult working group, and because of our leadership and identification of issues and needed innovation, LAAAC is currently co-leading a pilot in LA County Service Planning Area’s 2 & 7 to facilitate education & collaboration between the Senior Services and Homeless Services sectors!

Within our transportation work, we have been working with Metro over the last 3 years to improve services, accessibility, availability and reliability of public and paratransit options serving older adults and people with disabilities in LA County. We advocated for and are excited about the release of Metro’s first ever Aging and Disability Transportation Report, You can find the full report here. We’ve worked with Metro and fellow transportation advocates to plan and organize the 1st Metro Aging and Disability Transportation Forum that was held in November 2019! With the first report completed and the first convening commenced, we now have data, benchmarks and numbers from which we can grow, improve and increase services for older adults on both fixed line and para-transit systems. And, we continue to meet monthly with Metro’s Countywide Planning and Development Department leaders to identify areas of opportunity, unmet need, and options to better serve and increase ridership amongst older adults and people with disabilities. We are proud of our accomplishments and have made great strides, AND we’ve still got a long way to go to make Metro an equitable and accessible transportation authority for older adults!

In June we convened a group of local stakeholders to inform the CA State Masterplan on Aging, and we continue to engage in and track this exciting work! We also held our 10th Annual Summit on Aging at a great new location and received laudatory feedback. And to keep us even more busy, we are already planning for the 11th Annual Summit on Aging to be held on Friday June 5, 2020, and our annual Housing Conference to be held on Tuesday October 27, 2020. For the Summit on Aging, stay tuned for an exciting day of content focused around one unifying theme of Diversity and Inclusion. We will be examining and discussing Senior Services, Healthcare, and Workforce Development within the field of aging! Topics will focus on cultural competency, creating a pipeline of diverse leaders within aging, and how we build more inclusive, diverse and equitable aging organizations. We are excited and we know this will be our BEST SUMMIT YET!

 We thank the community of stakeholders for their continued support of the Los Angeles Aging Advocacy Coalition under the leadership of SBSS! Without the support of organizations, individuals and policy makers, we couldn’t do all that we do, and we are forever grateful for their participation and engagement within these many bodies of work. Together, we will create a Los Angeles region that is equitable, accessible, and informed by the unique needs of older adults.