San Diego County officials launched a new Aging Dashboard as the region’s population of adults 60 and older is projected to top 824,000 by 2029.
“It’s wonderful that we’re living so long, but with that comes some challenges and some goals that we have to work on,” said Allison Boyer, interim director of Aging and Independence Services.
“Our programs locally and at the state and federal level are going to need to grow to accommodate higher needs, higher caseloads, and just our older adult population as a whole,” she said.
The dashboard pulls together dozens of indicators, including housing costs and hospitalization rates, drawing from more than 30 sources such as federal census data, regional planning agencies and state health surveys. It is modeled after California’s Master Plan for Aging and aligns with goals around inclusion, equity, housing, caregiving and affordability.
“There’s always that worry, again, that there’s the growing population, and there’s not enough resources in the community, and I think this dashboard really helps us see the bigger picture,” Boyer said.
She said housing stands out as a major concern, especially with most seniors living on fixed incomes and housing prices continuing to rise.
“Based on this data from this dashboard, a little over a quarter of our older adult households are renters, and the remaining are homeowners. About half of whom still have a mortgage,” Boyer said.
Boyer said it will help the county and community partners focus funding where needs are highest.
“They heavily rely on various funding sources as well to operate and to serve our older adult and disabled population, so this data can help them with seeking grant funding,” Boyer said.
She said by making data more transparent and easier to explore, the dashboard can also help families find answers about their own neighborhoods.
“The goal and the hope is really, that it tells the story of the needs within San Diego County, those priorities, the work that we need to continue to do and then the areas that maybe we need to focus more on,” she said.
The dashboard is publicly available on the County’s Community Health Statistics website.
