Former Rep. Bill Hudson and his wife Lucy wanted to stay in Juneau, but they couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
When Lucy developed frontal-lobe dementia and needed what Bill described as \u201ctotal care,\u201d they had to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were not able to find that here,\u201d Bill said Thursday. \u201cI did everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t that Juneau wasn\u2019t just without suitable options, Hudson said, but it was without any options. The Juneau Pioneer Home provides housing for seniors, but the wait list is so full that people wait many years to get in. He and Lucy moved to Colorado four months ago, leaving behind the city of which they\u2019d become such active members<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sioux Douglas, the president of Senior Citizen Support Services, Inc., said Hudson isn\u2019t an isolated case. Douglas spoke at Thursday\u2019s Juneau Chamber of Commerce luncheon about this issue and what can be done to fix it. Hudson happened to be in town this week and sat in on the talk.<\/p>\n A main goal of SCSSI is to get an assisted living facility called Riverview Senior Community up and running to help ameliorate this problem. Riverview would be an 88-bed facility<\/a> for seniors in need of assistance and memory care.<\/p>\n She frequently gets what she called \u201cheartbreaking\u201d phone calls of people asking to be put on a waiting list for the community, and she records names and numbers on a piece of paper next to her phone. Many of them, such as Lucy Hudson, need to find assistance soon and end up leaving Juneau.<\/p>\n Douglas, speaking to a room at the Moose Lodge that was packed with businesspeople, pointed out that this problem is not only jarring for the community in an emotional sense, but also in an economic sense.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only do we lose their wisdom, their histories, their cultures, their experiences,\u201d Douglas said, \u201cwe lose their wealth, because they take their portfolios with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Douglas said that with the senior population in Juneau (and the state) rising rapidly, keeping seniors in Juneau would \u201cprofoundly\u201d affect the local economy.<\/p>\n