Light being shined on seniors' search for city living.

As the general population ages, the real estate, construction and design industries are facing the challenges of building housing for the elderly that's affordable, as well as functional and pleasing to older adults. At a recent Woman in Housing and Finance Spring breakfast, four specialists joined a panel discussion detailing elder care housing options in the city.

According to the 2000 census, approximately 20% of Manhattan's population is over 60 years old. These seniors require adequate housing to meet their needs.

Elder care housing runs the gamut of full-service nursing care to independent living, where healthier adults live.

With seniors having limited income, one of the major issues in developing affordable housing for the elderly is financing the project.

"The major obstacle to do this for affordable assisted living or senior housing is that at the present time there is no defined funding vehicle available," said Friedhilde Milburn, of Health Advocates for Older People, Inc.

Usually many different funding sources are necessary to finance the entire project, including tying in the residents Medicaid and Medicare insurance to secure funding, private funding, and as philanthropic and government sources, as well as funds from individuals, said Milburn.

"To the best of my knowledge no project can proceed without the substantial infusion of private or philanthropic funds," she said. "Depending of the type of housing, and the depth of services added, the price is driven of course by the real estate on which it is built."

Suzanne Salomon, the renovation coordinator at the Wein House--a 100-unit senior housing project in the Bronx--detailed the financing structure created to renovate an existing HUD senior housing project, a long and complicated process.

Once the project was underway, Salomon's job began. She was the liaison between the tenants and the construction team.

"It has been a real challenge to meet the needs of what the residents want and what the construction crew needs to do," she said.

Nina De Martini-Day, managing partner of DDM Development and Services, spoke about the city's the first ever assisted living residence specifically for low-income seniors--the 127-unit deSales residence in East Harlem.

In the mid-nineties, New York State Department of Health created an assisted living program called ALE This program didn't fund projects, but were the mechanism to issue Requests For Proposals to companies that would be awarded the right to be licensed to build projects.

The licensing vehicle gave the company the right to have the residences of the project merge their Medicaid and SSI payments into a one lump sum payment to help secure financing for the project, said De Martini-Day.

The deSales used ALF combined with other financing and, like the Wein House, several parties were involved in the project.

Designing, as well as financing a project, is critical to a projects success. Lynn Katzmann, of Juniper Communities, which has elderly housing projects in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Colorado, discussed the designing of senior housing.

Juniper takes into account the values, wants and needs of seniors. Katzmann said seniors have five core values which are having choice, maintaining dignity and privacy, living in a home-like environment and having independence.

"When you are designing for the elderly, ask them what they want, recognize when you start building, when you end building things are not going to be the same," Katzmann said. "You need to think ahead to the future."

Seniors want to feel a part of the community, Katzmann said. "In our buildings, we try to create small neighborhoods," she said. "What we discovered is about 13 to 15 people is the largest size for a good community. So we began to group, to the degree we could, apartments in small neighborhoods."

There are several housing projects for seniors in New York City. For additional information contact Health Advocates for Older People Inc. at www.hafopinc.org.