Seniors in Detroit often face challenges maintaining older homes. The nonprofit organization U SNAP BAC (which stands for United Streets Networking And Planning: Building A Community), on Detroit’s East Side, created a program to help with home repairs and to address needs that it often sees among the seniors it serves.

Last year, U SNAP BAC launched the Senior Empowerment Grant Program, which provided grants of up to $2,000 for seniors to use for home repairs that were needed for health or safety. The program, with 35 participants, also offered workshops in financial planning, digital literacy and estate planning.

One is 62-year-old James Earl Baker, who has been living in his house since 1992.

“I needed a front door badly,” he said. Through the program, he got the door replaced. Other participants used the grants to fix broken porch steps, radiators, and lighting, for example.

Baker appreciated not just the grant but also the education that went along with it — that participants didn’t just show up and collect the money, he said.

“Before they just gave you the grant, you had to go through some classes… as far as how to spend your money, save your money and different discounts seniors could take part of. And not only that — if you participated and went to all the classes, you got a free Chromebook.”

For the home repairs, the participants attended an orientation and were given information on how to find contractors and get proposals.

“The clients then began to bring in their grant proposals, and we had an inspector come out, take a look at their property to make sure that the grant would fit their needs,” said Shanin Green-Flowers, director of housing services at U SNAP BAC.

The Senior Empowerment Grant Program educated participants about the process and how to hire someone responsibly, Baker said. For example: “Don’t give your money to old shifty Bob!” he quipped.

“Home repair is so important,” Green-Flowers said. “These houses that these seniors are living in, they’re old houses. They don’t have a lot of electrical updates. It’s been an overwhelming satisfaction just knowing that, even if it’s just a $2,000 repair, it’s been able to take some stress from them.”

Financial empowerment

Green-Flowers hosted the financial empowerment workshop, which included managing retirement income, preparing to age in place and financial scams to look out for.

“A lot of the seniors actually had an issue with budgeting, and the reason being is that it’s hard for them to understand that even on a fixed or limited income, you can still manage your money,” she said.

After the workshop, several of the seniors came back for free one-on-one counseling with U SNAP BAC.

“We were able to deep dive into their finances to see where they could free up some additional money, or where they could save money so that things aren’t as expensive for them,” Green-Flowers said.

She also created a resource guide for participants. It included information on ways to save money on energy and utility bills, medical expenses, and prescriptions.

Baker said the resource guide was helpful.

“The main thing was a lot of discounts and help. Because mostly everybody who’s a senior is on a fixed income, including me, and every little bit you can save, that adds up.”

In this way, the Senior Empowerment Grant Program is not just providing grants and education but also connecting seniors to other resources that already exist — but that they may be unaware of. In some instances, this includes resources for needs as basic as food.

“There are a lot of seniors who were just excited to be able to find out where they can get free food,” Green-Flowers said.

“A lot of people don’t know about programs… that help out struggling seniors,” Baker said. “I wish the word could get out more to different people that they exist. That there is help.” About the Senior Empowerment Grant Program, he said, “It’s been a blessing to me.”

Green-Flowers also explained that the seniors shouldn’t feel like a burden on society.

“You have contributed to society so much, and it’s time for society to contribute to you,” she told them. “You shouldn’t feel as if you’re a burden when you’re asking for help, because you built this. They invested their time, their power, their money, their energy, into creating and helping and being a functioning member of society.”

Digital literacy

Participants were given new Chromebooks, and an IT professional taught them how to get started with them, helping them set up a new Gmail account if they didn’t already have one. Baker said he was already comfortable using computers, but he noticed that some of the older seniors in his group weren’t, and the course leader took the time to walk them through using them.

The course also equipped participants to manage their finances using their Chromebooks. Giving them this digital access, both for bill payment systems “and just to have some sort of additional entertainment in the home was really empowering for them,” Green-Flowers said.

“They were so excited,” she said. “I got so many seniors coming back, and when they were bringing in their information for the contractors, they were telling me all of the things that they were doing on the Internet.”

Baker pointed out that participants also were able to access the resources from the resource guide on their Chromebooks.

“You can get on your Chromebook and type that in, and they learned how to do all that kind of stuff,” he said. “Everybody had a lot of smiles.”

This digital access is important.

“A lot of the grant programs that are available through the city of Detroit require our seniors to be able to have Internet access so that they can upload the required documents,” Green-Flowers said. “Without a laptop or a computer, it makes it really, really hard.”

Estate planning

The estate planning course, which took place in October, addressed the need to have a will in place. A common scenario, Green-Flowers said, is that “Mom and Dad wrote on a piece of paper ‘the nephew gets the house when I pass away.’ But, of course, that’s not an actual legal and binding document” and that creates problems in probate court.

U SNAP BAC has reached its funding limit for the Senior Empowerment Grant Program, but Green-Flowers is hopeful funding will come in to continue programming.

“These seniors need help,” she said. “They need those home repairs. A lot of them want to age in place. They don’t want to leave their property. But without the grants and the funding from the nonprofit partners here in the city of Detroit, it really makes it hard for those seniors to get all of the necessary repairs completed.”

At the same time, she said, “Seniors want to learn more. They want to thrive.”

Resilient Neighborhoods is a reporting and engagement series that examines how Detroit residents and community development organizations are working together to strengthen local neighborhoods. This story was originally produced and published by Model D Media and is reprinted here and in New Michigan Media newspapers through a partnership supported by the Kresge Foundation.