By Cindy J. Roth
Cooper, 63, and Loos, 73, are battling a slew of medical problems. Cooper cannot walk without the assistance of a walker and suffers from heart and blood problems and diabetes. He downs 12 different medications a day. Loos, who has severe heart problems, can only walk for a short time before becoming short of breath.
The two friends have taken care of each other for the past four years, living in a two-bedroom upstairs apartment on Grant Avenue. But as the homeowner decided to sell the house, Cooper and Loos, who have limited savings and cannot afford real estate broker fees to find a new home, have been left with few options.
"Our only alternative is to get in our car down there and drive off into oblivion," said Cooper.
Since being notified by their landlord in June about the sale of the home, Cooper and Loos said they have contacted about 500 county and town senior housing facilities, adult service agencies and churches. The two war veterans have also contacted the Red Cross, Salvation Army and town, county and state politicians. Each time Cooper and Loos have either been bumped from one person to another on the other end of the phone leading nowhere, or been told that the housing waitlist is upward of two years. Sensitive to the East Rockian's plight, their landlord even afforded the men two extra months stay in hopes they would find a new home, but their search is still ongoing.
Cooper and Loos' dilemma speaks volumes of the lack of senior citizen housing in Nassau County and Long Island as a whole. It also raises awareness of a lack of a centralized organization that links the various aid agencies together.
In the 2000 Census the number of residents in Nassau County 60-years-old and older decreased .9 percent from 259,520 in the 1990 Census. For Long Island the decrease was .2 percent. However, residents on Long Island are getting older. The number of 75 to 85-year-olds living on Long Island increased by 32,312 persons, about 1 percent, from 1990 to 2000. The 45 to 54 and 55 to 59-year-olds categories also saw similar increases.
While there has been an increase in the number of senior citizen complexes being built across Long Island to compensate for the aging population in the past few years, the high cost of living at these centers leaves many with no savings and no family with no where to go.
On average the cost to live in an assisted living facility can run between $2,000 to $4,000. For Cooper, whose income from Social Security is only $618 a month and Loos, who receives $1,100 a month but must pay out-of-pocket for medications, a high-class facility is just not feasible. Especially when their combined savings is less than $500.
"No one cares a damn in this whole country," said Cooper, who at one time worked for NBC. "We paid taxes for years and now we need help and there is no help. We can't go anywhere."
The Red Cross, which helped house displaced seniors from the Nathan Hale Senior Village fire in Lynbrook last April, only finds temporary housing for people whose homes are destroyed by fire or other devastating situations, according to Jim Green, Red Cross director of public relations. In the case of eviction or homelessness, like Cooper and Loos, the Red Cross only instructs people which community resources could provide help. The Red Cross does not consider eviction a "devastating" situation.
One place the Red Cross refers many people on the verge of homelessness is the Nassau County Department of Social Services. The social services department, however, is merely a conduit that provides additional information to people according to Mitchell Sahn, executive director of Nassau County Health and Human Services. The lead county agency that deals with senior housing is the Department of Housing and Inter-governmental Affairs.
Sahn said the county realizes the aging population problem on Long Island and is committed to finding seniors suitable housing through a pronged multi-agency approach, but he said there simply is not enough housing to accommodate the demand.
"We're going to be out on the street," said Cooper. "I don't know what to do. No one wants to help someone who is homeless. We're desperate."
Senior citizen housing through the Town of Hempstead is available in 14 locations with a total of 1,309 apartments, which range in size and the number of residents living in them. Beyond the Town of Hempstead, most of the incorporated villages within the town have their own housing authorities, which cater specifically to village residents. The town therefore deals mostly with residents living in unincorporated villages and incorporated villages without housing authorities like East Rockaway.
The current waitlist for senior housing is three to five years, according to Town of Hempstead Housing Authority executive director Ronnie Lawrence. Lawrence said couples and those who are more mobile and can maneuver stairs often move through the waitlist quicker.
Lawrence said she heard about Cooper and Loos' plight last week and since then has been working diligently to find two studio apartments for them to live in.
"We try to accommodate evictions as quickly as possible," said Lawrence. "When we see something like this we try to jump on it."
The cost to live in a Town of Hempstead senior housing facility is 30-percent of whatever a person's income is. For Cooper that would mean $185.40 and for Loos $330 a month. In their East Rockaway apartment combined they pay $950 a month. However, by the time the housing authority can find them housing it may be too late. Lawrence said it usually takes people a month to get their paperwork together to fill out all of the town's forms. Cooper said he was never in contact with the town Housing Authority and assumes a letter he sent to one of many lawmakers must have ended up in Lawrence's hands. Consequently, Cooper said he has no paperwork to put together.
Cooper and Loos will be kicked out of their home on Saturday. The two are packing up their things, which they plan to leave at a friend's house in Oceanside, but they still have no where to go.
"He'll last about a week. I'll last about a week and a half," said Cooper. "I don't know what we're going to do."
