In the News

Alive in New York Until the Last Minute 
A Housing Plan That Would Benefit Older Artists and Their City
By Vivian Gornick

When my mother died two years ago at the age of 94, she was still living in the apartment she had occupied for thirty years in a middle-income housing project in Manhattan. She knew everyone in her building, had good neighbors and elevator acquaintances, and said hello regularly to many people in the street. She was working class to the core, and the project, which was union-subsidized, provided a reassuring atmosphere of social familiarity Yet, oddly enough, among all these people she had found no companion with whom she could run about Warm, intelligent, confrontational, possessed of great vigor and rude good health, my mother was always on the go. She attended every free movie, concert and lecture series in the city, and Lincoln Center was a hangout. In compulsive need of social contact, she made friends easily wherever she went. Not a day passed without an adventure in the street. New York and my mother were made for each other.

At 90 she began to lose her balance. Within two years, she could no longer walk in the street. She was the same in every regard except that now she was unable to run freely about the city; providing herself with the stimulus she craved That, however, was some "except" She was more or less housebound now, and the alteration in her was rapid Her children and neighbors visited regularly, but we somehow could not give her what she needed She grew steadily more listless and withdrawn. Within herself she began to drift. For the first time in her life she lost definition, no longer looked herself. She now began to look like generic old woman.

One day when I was visiting I brought along a friend, a person who also talks to everyone she meets in the street Unexpectedly, this friend's presence was enlivening. In no time at all she and my mother were deep in conversation; that is, real conversation, not the ritual exchange that elicited no response. The change in my mother was immediate and astonishing to observe. Within an hour not only was she looking younger and more alive, but--and this was really startling--she began to look again like herself.

It wasn't hard to figure out what was happening: The conversation was allowing my mother to remember that she had a mind, and, in the act of occupying it, she was being returned to her old self What was remarkable to me was how strongly she wanted to be herself again. The desire, clearly; had been there all along, trapped inside her failing body I saw that at the age of 92 my mother was hungry to stay alive in the only way that counts. Between then and the end of her life, given half a chance to be 'herself" she invariably took it.

Watching my mother in the last years of her life, I began to think about my own coming old age. My situation, I thought, was not so unlike hers. I, too, was alone. I, too, was financially marginal, had a living relationship to the city; and many acquaintances but not many intimates. I realized that when I think about growing too old to take care of myself the worst part of it seems to be that I, like my mother; might end my days confined to a place where congenial company is not a given and, worse yet, I might be deprived of New York City. Fear of loneliness and isolation, I saw, was my great anxiety about the years ahead.

Faced with such potential starkness, I began to fantasize. Wouldn't it be wonderful, I daydreamed, to end up in a residence in Manhattan full of smart, lively women (and yes, men too) whose lives bore some rough resemblance to my own; a place where the chance for compassionate exchange would be better than even, so that I might be "myself"--even if only for an hour or two a day over a communal dinner. Then I stopped daydreaming and thought, Why need this be a fantasy? Why not a reality? 1 went through 'fly phone book and invited almost every woman I'd known over the past twenty years to come and talk about what was on my mind. Thirty of them showed up.

The differences among them in temperament, interest and finances-were great, and the responses ranged from "What will it cost me?" to "Will there be medical care?" to "Who's in charge of Wednesday night movies?" But every woman in the room that night agreed that isolation of the spirit was the thing she most feared about old age. A residence formed with this concern in mind was altogether to be desired.

Out of that meeting came two years of meetings, and now at last-with the help of an exciting young agency called Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation organization is beginning to form itself that is intent on making the fantasy a reality. We are a group of women in late middle age-many of us artists and activists-who want to live out our later years on a continuum with our earlier ones. Most of us have spent our entire lives in New York. We love this city. We have been active in its neighborhoods, taken part in its politics, walked its crowded streets, and helped shape its daily culture. We are writers, painters, teachers, filmmakers and scientists. What draws us together is our shared values-among them the belief that growing old in an atmosphere of our own shaping could make the future interesting, possibly even pleasurable, rather than a thing to be feared.

From every perspective imaginable it seems preferable to us to grow old in the company of like-spirited people, and to retain the ability to go on interacting with the city whose cultural life our presence would continue to enrich. Toward this end, we are working to establish a nonprofit senior residence in Manhattan, to be subsidized by private funding and then run with the monthly rents that will be paid on an affordable sliding scale-by the residents. We are envisioning a single building to be composed of a hundred apartments plus a set of public rooms-a dining room, ~ library, a living room, perhaps even a gallery-where residents may gather freely to reanimate themselves on a daily basis and keep alive their connection with the larger community by giving lectures, performances and master classes based on the knowledge and expertise accumulated during long working lives. In this way, the residents would in a sense go on working, and the city would continue to feel their presence: the dynamic that really is New York's living legacy.

The private funding is necessary because we are neither indigent nor prosperous; therefore, we cannot come in for public money, nor can we afford the astronomical rents a for-profit residence would charge. At the end of the day, people like our-selves-most of us having spent our lives in the arts or in public causes and now growing old in financially marginal circumstances-are overwhelmingly on our own. Raising the money privately for this residence, and then charging rent on a sliding scale of affordability, is the only way we can think of to avoid being punished for not having spent our lives accumulating the right kind of capital.

The problem of achieving a decent old age is a monumental one in this country. One of the major causes of an "indecent" old age is not only the loss and deprivation of the place we have come to call home but, even more important, the loss of the kind of companionship that keeps a working mind alive until the last minute. This residence could become a model for how to do it.