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50th Anniversary
In 2010 the New York Citizens’ Committee on Aging, Inc. will celebrate its 50th year of promoting the status and well being of New York’s aging community. Since its first meeting at City Hall in October 1960, when Mayor Robert F. Wagner transferred to the Community Council of Greater New York the responsibility for the “Mayor’s Advisory Committee for the Aged”, the New York Citizens’ Committee on Aging has been involved in the historic policy issues that affect older persons. We advocated with the New York State Legislature to develop its Medicaid program and its first successful $500 million bond issue to build nursing homes under non-profit auspices. We recommended that the city create a municipal agency concerned entirely with the problems of older persons and provided staff to assist in the creation of what became the New York City Department for the Aging. We led the effort in the 1970’s to enroll those eligible for SSI; and published a widely distributed report on the Social Security and Medicare programs in the 1980’s.
More recently, the Committee launched the Initiative to Combat Elder Poverty in New York City, sponsored a 2007 forum to call attention to the high rate of elder poverty in the city, and published the document Keeping the Promise: Recommendations to Reduce Elder Poverty in New York City; which offers realistic solutions that have a chance to improve the quality of life for New York City’s elderly poor.
We are planning a gala event to celebrate our 50th anniversary.
For additional information, please call our director Eleanor Ramos at 212-353-3950.