Within the next 16 years, Juneau’s population of senior citizens is projected to double. A local nonprofit is working to make sure this quickly growing segment of the city’s population has access to assisted living.
For the past three years, Juneau resident Sioux Douglas has been leading an effort to build RiverView Senior Community, an assisted living community of nearly 90 units near Safeway in the Mendenhall Valley.
“This isn’t just the whim of some of us who’d like a place to go,” she told the Empire. “It’s based on statistical need. It’s based on our rapidly aging population. It’s based on good hard numbers that demand that we need something like this.”
Douglas heads the board of directors for Senior Citizens Support Services Inc., the Juneau nonprofit behind the project. The statistics to which she was referring come from a 2014 market study that the SCSSI and the Juneau Economic Development Council put together to gauge the need for RiverView.
According to a population projection from Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Juneau’s senior population will grow from about 3,500 to roughly 7,000 by 2032.
The Juneau Pioneer Home, the city’s only assisted living community for seniors, only has space for 53 seniors. Its active waiting list contains 125 names, according to Douglas, and until recently, that list was growing. On Thursday, public radio station KTOO-FM reported that Alaska’s six Pioneer Homes (the state-run assisted living facilities for seniors in Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Palmer, Anchorage and Fairbanks) are no longer taking new residents due to budget cuts.
The widening gap between the number of seniors who want or need assisted living has consequences for Juneau residents. SCSSI Treasurer Don Gotschall knows this better than most people.
At 81, Gotschall is still active and happy living without assistance, but he has several friends who have had to move out of town in search of assisted living. This is typical of people his age, he explained.
“You can pick anybody over 80, and they’ll tell you the same,” Gotschall said.
He has had friends move to Texas, Colorado and Washington, all common places for Juneau seniors to move. They wouldn’t be leaving if they didn’t have to, Gotschall said.
Marianne Mills, program director of Southeast Senior Services, said she and her co-workers have seen the seniors they serve leaving Juneau in search of assisted living elsewhere.
Though Gotschall said he’s still a few years away from needing assisted living, he hopes RiverView is ready when that time comes.
“I hope I get it built before I need it,” Gotschall said. “If you’ve fished the salmon derby your whole life, going down to Texas and living in the flat lands isn’t really comparable to living by the water and the glacier.”
SCSSI is still trying to find investors for RiverView, which will likely cost about $25 million to complete. Douglas is looking for $3 million to $5 million from initial investors to move the project along.
RiverView originally had the startup money it needed, but the investment group backing the project pulled out about a month ago. Its members were from out of town and struggled “understanding the Juneau community and economics here,” Douglas said.
“We have several irons in the fire, we are not discouraged, but we’d love some local engagement if people are interested,” Douglas said.
SCSSI had planned to break ground on RiverView by late fall. That likely won’t be the case any longer, but Douglas thinks an early spring 2017 groundbreaking is well within reach.
SCSSI has finished all of the pre-development work. It has secured 2.5 acres of land co-located with Trillium Landing, a planned senior housing complex. And the first phase of architectural design is finished.
For seven years running, Alaska has led the nation as the state with the fastest-growing senior population, according to Denise Daniello, executive director of the Alaska Commission on Aging.
No other region in the state has a higher concentration of seniors than Southeast Alaska. Here, seniors (age 60 and older) make up almost 20 percent of the population, Daniello said.
“People want to age in place if they can, and they at least want to age in their own community,” Douglas said. “That’s this is about, and we’re so close, but we can’t taste it yet.”
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
