Lake Ridge seniors rally at U.S. Capitol for affordable housing

WASHINGTON – Residents from a Lake Ridge senior affordable housing community joined the Senior Housing Now rally to protect seniors’ housing rights.

Residents from Fellowship Square urged Congress to protect housing and subsidies for seniors at the U.S. Capitol lawn last week. About 100 Fellowship Square residents from other locations in  Northern Virginia and Maryland, and by hundreds of other seniors and senior advocates, asking Congress to expand funding for these programs.

Only one in three low-income seniors, about 34% receive the housing assistance they are eligible for because the programs are small compared to real need. With housing, rental, and health care costs rising, older adults are at greater risk of homelessness than at any time in recent history, according to Justice in Aging.

To address this trend, the Senior Housing Now rally urged Congress to:

1. Protect and expand HUD’s Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program that provides capital advances and operating assistance to finance the development of housing for elderly residents.
2. Protect and expand HUD’s Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) program providing rental housing to low-income households in privately owned and managed rental units. The program currently enables housing for 1.2 million households; two-thirds of which are older adults or people with disabilities.

“Seniors of limited means used to be able to stay in their homes or downsize into rental apartments. Today in our area, however, older renters get squeezed out as rents have exploded. Housing costs are at an all-time high in our region, resulting in fewer and fewer options for seniors on limited incomes. Current funding levels for affordable housing are not keeping pace with demand. The lack of expanded federal funding translates into older adults being treated as third-class citizens, as only one-third of eligible low-income seniors currently receiving housing assistance,” said Christy Zeitz, CEO of Fellowship Square, a co-host of the rally.

Nancy Delay, an 89-year-old resident of Fellowship Square’s Lake Ridge community in Woodbridge shared her story:

“My husband and I were in our 60’s and we had to move apartments every few years to stay in one we could afford. When the rents would raise at the end of our initial rental agreement, we so often could no longer afford it and would have to start all over to find something in our price range again.  We lived in many places in Maryland and Virginia as my husband neared his retirement from the postal service, and as rents kept rising it was getting harder and harder to find an apartment where we could stay for the long term. My daughter found the Lake Ridge community for us, and at the time – more than 20 years ago – there was little waitlist and we were able to move in quickly. Today, it can take years to get in.

I feel for the seniors in our area who are on long waitlists for housing help and whose lives are in distress. They don’t have the money for the rent they are paying now and can end up homeless and, worse, sleeping on the street or in a shelter. I came to the Senior Housing Now rally because I want our government to do what it can to build more affordable housing and subsidized housing for seniors. I’m now 89 and I’ve been safe and secure and living healthily in a stable home because I’ve had the benefits of subsidized housing. I want that for others.”

Fellowship Square’s 670 apartments across four communities in Northern Virginia and Maryland provide housing and support services for 800 low-income older residents. The Lake Ridge community opened in 1982 and has 100 one-bedroom apartments, a social hall, and other common areas. It is specifically for government-subsidized housing for individuals age 62 and older on a limited income, according to Shelley Ducker, a communications consultant at Fellowship Square.