April 10, 2002
This week's Bulletin was written by Jim Lauth.
This Week's Meeting
President Blackburn called the meeting to order. Steve Bridge led the Pledge of Allegiance, Margaret Oppliger offered three wise comments from “Quotations by Women on Life,” and Jim Mulvaney led a rousing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in honor of the Padres season opening home games this week.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Prez Blackburn introduced the usual contingent of guests: from Club 33, prospective members, local guests, and one out-of-town Rotarian who received a San Diego flag for his visit.
Hugh Largey introduced Student of the Month Sandra Flores and her teacher sponsor.
New
Member chair Mike Jones introduced and inaugurated new member Kirk Hill
(pictured here with his wife and mother-in-law), a web application developer
with many notable clients.
Melissa reported on attending the District Council dinner and the finals of the Four Way Speech Contest.
Colette
Murray presented a lapel pin, medal and certificate to Jim Lauth as another of
the club’s new Paul Harris Fellows.
FINES! FINES?
By his own admission, this was a slim week for Sgt. Frank. The birthday and anniversary celebrants were all no-shows, Sgt. Frank teased Rob Berry about the stock market, and then Frank bragged about his own son’s promotion. (That was it, folks! Let’s all try to help out by sending info to Sgt. Frank – anonymously, if necessary. This is a busy club. There must be something out there to report.)
PROGRAM
Our speaker was Paul Downey, President of Senior Community Centers, a non-profit organization that supports the health, economic, nutrition and housing needs of low income seniors in downtown San Diego.
The Centers serve more than 1,000 meals a week to seniors in their centers and by delivery to the home bound.
Paul reported that most of their constituents are below the poverty level, due to a variety of reasons. Often, “bad things happened to good people,”or they simply outlived their money, or in some cases made bad life choices.
Paul reported that the need for senior services is a problem that is only going to get worse as the baby boomers reach retirement age and beyond.
There is a particular problem of homelessness among seniors in San Diego. With rising rents in San Diego’s housing crunch, affordable housing is hard to come by for people living on Social Security. Those checks just aren’t sufficient for many seniors to pay rent and meet all of their other basic needs. The Senior Community Centers is now building a 200 unit housing project near the site of the new baseball park, but Paul reports that this isn’t nearly enough to meet the demand for affordable housing. He said he has 500 people on a waiting list for the 200 units that won’t even be ready for occupancy for more than a year.
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