Silicon Valley faces challenges as its population gets older

Although Silicon Valley has a reputation for attracting young, tech-savvy workers, the cycle may no longer be true as statistics point toward older adults shifting the dynamic and the area being ill-equipped for the looming change.

Fewer births and longer life expectancies will have Americans age 65 and up outnumbering children by 2030, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But local leaders warn the boom will happen much sooner in Silicon Valley. Birth rates in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties have dropped by 34% over the last 33 years, while residents 65 and up have grown by 28% since 2013, according to this year's annual report on economic and demographic trends known as the Silicon Valley Index. Yet the region is failing to address its future and needed changes to housing, long-term adult care and mobility as the population grows older.

"It's happening around the country, but it's going to happen much sooner here -- and more dramatically -- than around the rest of the country," Joe Simitian, former District 5 Santa Clara County supervisor, told San Jose Spotlight. "That generates a whole cascade of things on a 'to do' list that we should be working on now."

Housing is going to become a major challenge. Older adults are staying put and younger people are leaving the area, which has one of the highest housing costs in the nation. It spells a future of fewer working-age people, such as caregivers and health care workers, who can't afford to live in the valley and will have to commute from outside the region making immediate, ongoing care difficult.

The more people age and their incomes become fixed, the less likely they'll move out of homes with lower tax rates, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley CEO Russell Hancock, who oversees the study of regional economic and demographic trends every year.

"That locks (older) people into their houses," Hancock told San Jose Spotlight. "The elderly are actually stuck in that house which is probably too big and that introduces inefficiency in a region that needs efficiency -- we need all those extra rooms."

Elder boom

During Simitian's 12 years as county supervisor, his office explored ideas to support the region's future older adult boom. That included adult day care, which gave caregivers respite during the day and helped older adults remain in their homes over costlier living facilities. He studied support programs for caregivers through training.

His office even doled out funding to refurbish homes and community centers to make them age-friendly.
"But unfortunately, the county budget situation is not as robust as it once was," Simitian said.

A widening structural financial deficit could put the county's critical social safety net services on the chopping block. The county's largest funding source for its public health care services could vanish if Congress follows through on proposed spending cuts to Medicaid. This could put more social services on the back-burner as officials grapple with absorbing the county's worst fiscal crisis since the pandemic.

Tylor Taylor, chair of the Santa Clara County Senior Care Commission, said it's difficult for his panel to make real progress when it doesn't have the ability to provide more input on budget decisions regarding elder care and services for the aging population. He said the commission should have a more active role in weighing in on staffing levels for older adult protective services and senior nutrition programs.

"You schedule speakers, hear presentations and present recommendations to the Board of Supervisors. It's an indirect route," Taylor told San Jose Spotlight. "There should be a fiduciary layer to the work -- we don't have to be necessarily assigned a budget, but the commission should be able to make decisions on budgeting. Without that, there's really no teeth."

Mobility challenges

At a more local level, efforts to increase older adult mobility have become disjointed. Cities who initially shrugged off the obligation to help fund elderly ride-share services are now starting their own different costlier shuttles.

One of Simitian's and Taylor's biggest strides was championing the 2017 rollout of the county's Reach Your Destination Easily (RYDE) program, a curb-to-curb transportation and local trip planning service for adults 65 and up. It predominantly serves the West Valley -- Campbell, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and Saratoga. The service recently expanded into parts of San Jose and Morgan Hill. Taylor said the program has applied for another round of funding to help expand into Gilroy.

But RYDE faced challenges getting communities to buy in. One reason was that RYDE didn't have an app. Cities that helped launch the program through seed money ended up launching their own, according to Taylor, whose Saratoga-based nonprofit Successful Aging Solutions & Community Consulting oversaw the service for the county.

"These shuttle programs are much more expensive," he said. "We asked these cities for $20,000 to $30,000 to help support RYDE, when Cupertino a year or two after spent $2 million to start their shuttle program."

Editor's note: This story originally appeared on San Jose Spotlight.