Dorcas Speer Interviews Maureen McGuiere (WOI News Clip 417)

Marie McGuire is special assistant on problems of the elderly housing and urban development with the federal government Mrs. McGuire how long and how did you happen to become interested in this field well if I say it was before the war that sounds like another year doesn't it but actually it was in 1941 just before World War two that I became interested in in the problem of community growth and low income people in particular this led me to return to school go to the University of Texas and take a school of architecture to be a little more knowledgeable about how we were going to bring about communities during a war period which was very imminent I think we all knew it sensed it with the dislocation and relocation of so many family groups and yet had a good environment for children while fathers and mothers were involved in war housing I mean in war war industry and so this study led me to the low rent housing field and of course in this field of housing automatically we come into contact with many older people because so many of our older people are in fact in the poverty sector yes now we always seem to have also a general growing interest in the aging problem in the older citizen you have any idea as to why this is happening oh it's not only growing it's growing so massively that we have a whole new profession right here with us today that didn't exist ten years ago even so long a short time ago is 10 years it's growing I think primarily in response to the fact the fact that the population itself is growing so rapidly that is in the older age groups this is due primarily to good medical science the research we know how better to take care of ourselves today and we found the answer to some of the great killers of the past and so with this growing number of older people some 18 million today expect it to be about 30 million people over 65 years of age by the time we reach nineteen seventy two or three I think the forecast is with this coming on they are beginning to rather older people are beginning to wrap a bigger and bigger group in our society this has caused us to stop think a little bit and say all right what about this do people retire to rocking chairs into uselessness and to loneliness and abandonment by the rest of society or do we put our good thoughts together and see what is the role of the older person and how we develop responsive answers from the general society to their needs well in many attempts to develop responsive programs there have been a number of programs that have developed now is this sanctioning separation from the families or sanctioning lack of family responsibilities or does this involve something more oh no not at all I don't think we have any basis whatsoever to indicate or to say with any validity that sons and daughters love their parents less or that there's less feeling of responsibility for one's older older members of one's family indeed it's quite the shoes on the other foot it's the older people themselves who want so to live that they don't have to be dependent on their children that in short mother doesn't want to sit by the hearth of her daughter as her role in life particularly since she has 15 20 or maybe 30 years after she's a great-grandmother to live along a while and she wants a definite and he wants a definite role in society for himself a fulfilling role a creative one a one for different opportunity and different excitement retraining re-education all the alive vivid lively things of life rather than than the retirement into loneliness despair and perhaps dependence on one's family what has really happened is that the community now is taking up the role and fulfilling the spaces in life that the family once did when it was a normal thing to have older or several generations living under one roof the house was big enough there was a role for the older person not just babysitting which is certainly not fulfilling for anyone as a full-time pursuit so the community organizations the churches the recreation groups volunteer groups of all kinds in addition to government all of these are by coming together now to develop significant enriching and fulfilling roles for older people and society generally of course will be the beneficiary well since there are not the family units that have either under the same roof or within you know down the street a couple houses the entire span of the generations are we replacing this with housing units that the house only given sectors of the population in other words separate units for the elderly which are apart from the other community is this good or do you have any comments to make about this yes I do because it's a matter of great concern to many people that as the price sometimes of good housing within the paying ability of older people we put a group of people together all of one age let's say from 65 to 85 or 65 up and many people are troubled that this removal a seeming removal of older people from the general population is a very bad thing not only for the older person as a matter of identity and so on and for results own self-esteem and status in society but also it removes them from from there affect their good affect on younger people well I can't agree with this in relation to your question which has to do with housing design housing types first we start with the fact that all people are have diverse interests older people certainly have diverse interests and tastes and desires we should build enough housing and enough variety to respond to each person's desire but if if you are putting people let us say in a high-rise apartment building and you're putting families next to older people and older people just under where family lives overhead and so on it becomes a very chaotic and awful situation for the older person for instance the older person maid now now that he has the leisure may want to sleep until 9:00 o'clock every morning but he has to wake up and get up at 6:00 because that's when the baby cries next-door or he likes to go to bed early or she does and the teenager is dancing till 2 in the morning well it seems to me if there's anything we are