Ann Arbor using grant funds to launch new program to help low-income seniors

Ann Arbor city hall

The Ann Arbor Municipal Center, which includes city hall and the Justice Center, at 301 E. Huron St., on Nov. 27, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

ANN ARBOR, MI — Ann Arbor’s sustainability office is teaming up with other partners to help low-income seniors reduce energy use and stay living in their homes longer.

As part of the city’s A2Zero carbon-neutrality initiative, Ann Arbor’s new Aging in Place Efficiently Program will be focused on helping low-income seniors with energy-efficiency improvements and aging support and services, said Missy Stults, the city’s sustainability manager.

Using grant funds, the city has a goal of helping at least 24 senior households by June 2022, Stults said.

“It’s both helping with aging in place, so the money can go for grab bars, wheelchair ramps, but it also can go for energy-efficiency work,” she said. “Because we’re working with low-income seniors, our partners are going to help leverage weatherization dollars, for example, to take us further, so we’ll leverage as much money as currently available through existing programs, and then we’ll come in and go deeper with the money we got from the grant.”

Q&A: Missy Stults discusses next steps in Ann Arbor’s plan to achieve carbon-neutrality

The new Ann Arbor program has been many months in the making. Michigan Saves, a nonprofit green bank that supports investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy, is acting as the fiscal agent for it.

In a May 2020 letter to Michigan Saves, the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities announced it was awarding the city and the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation a $99,252 Partners for Places grant to support launching the program.

In June 2020, the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation announced it was approving a $99,262 matching grant payable over two years for the program.

While the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the launch and the city has yet to carry out any improvements to seniors’ homes under the new program, it’s moving forward now.

The city signed an agreement with Michigan Saves in December and City Council voted last week to appropriate $14,000 of the grant funds to help hire two part-time program coordinators to get the initiative off the ground.

The majority of the nearly $200,000 for the program will go toward making physical improvements in low-income senior homes and to supporting social workers with providing the supporting services necessary to help seniors stay in their homes longer, Stults told council.

In addition to Michigan Saves, other project partners include Washtenaw County, Ann Arbor Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley, the Housing Bureau for Seniors and the Program for Multicultural Health at Michigan Medicine, and Tony Reames, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

The pilot program, which runs through June 2022, is one of the strategies outlined in the city’s A2Zero plan to significantly improve energy efficiency in people’s homes.

The plan calls for putting $150,000 toward helping seniors age in place efficiently over 10 years.

With physical improvements to their homes and energy-efficiency upgrades that reduce monthly expenses, the city’s stated goal is to allow all low-income seniors in the community to age gracefully and stay in their homes longer.

Washtenaw County and multiple nonprofits already offer weatherization services to low-income homeowners in Ann Arbor, the A2Zero plan notes.

“This program will provide expanded weatherization services to a broader segment of low-income senior citizens than the county program is allowed to currently serve,” it states, setting a goal of helping at least 20 low-income seniors reduce their energy bills by at least 15% by 2023.

In addition to helping seniors, the A2Zero plan sets a broader city goal of offering expanded weatherization and energy-efficiency services to all low-income residents by 2030. That includes funding to support electrification of homes, helping people shift away from gas furnaces and appliances to electric models that can be powered by renewable energy.

The A2Zero plan estimates $1.55 million will be needed over 10 years for those broader efforts.

The $14,000 appropriated last week will cover two-thirds of the cost of the Aging in Place Efficiently Program coordinators, and the rest of their pay will be covered by the sustainability office’s budget, a city memo states.

As for whether the positions will be ongoing and rolled into future city budgets, there isn’t a clear expectation about how the positions will evolve, the memo states.

“The intent of the pilot is to explore how best to support low-income seniors with aging in place by combining social services, physical home improvements, and efficiency upgrades,” the memo states. “We’ve purposefully chosen local and regional partners with expertise and interest in these areas, so that we can collaboratively design the pilot and, hopefully, design a program that builds on the pilot and supports low-income seniors throughout Washtenaw County.

“If the pilot is successful, we’ll then have to evaluate how best to scale to a full program. That might mean a new initiative at the city. It might mean something housed at the county. But it also could mean a program supported by our nonprofit partners. Overall, it’s too early to know exactly how the pilot will go and what that might mean for future staffing.”

In addition to grant funds, the sustainability office has programmed about $5,000 per fiscal year to support training, marketing, outreach and engagement with low-income seniors for the program, the memo states.

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