In their heyday, Roger and Hortance Masson were inseparable. Ever since they got married in the Bahamas in the late 1960s, they’ve spent their lives “spoiling one another,” as they put it, with their habits. Since moving to Brooklyn, most of the Haitian couple’s time has been spent at work, with each other, or at church.
Now in retirement, those habits have changed. Roger, 76, can be found on nice summer days in front of a barbershop on Washington Avenue in Crown Heights, cracking jokes and laughing with other regulars. Two blocks away, inside of their cramped one-bedroom apartment, Hortance, 84, is there by herself. About four hours in the mornings are spent with a home attendant, but all the while he is gone, the disabled wife is wishing for her husband to come back.
“At least, Roger is better off. He has the barbershop to enjoy himself with his friends,” said Hortance, who must bend over until her head nearly touches the top of her steel cane to move around. “Every day, I stay inside the house like a zombie. Some days, I sit at the window, waiting for him,” she said.
Concerned compatriots, politicians, pastors and community organizers all say that Haitian seniors need a place to go for recreation. A space that could not only provide recreational activities and assistance with problems, modeled after other senior centers funded by the city, but also have a cultural twist that would appeal to Haitians would be ideal, they say.
But little is being done to create such a space or to help them take advantage of many government-funded programs. The closest attempt at it by the Flatbush Haitian Center failed halfway through two years ago because the project’s administrators took too long to complete it. A grant close to $1 million given by the Department for the Aging (DEFTA) was revoked in 2002, as a result.
Beyond the absence of efforts, advocates say the city has yet to recognize that Haitian seniors make up a significant portion of the city’s “graying population” and that they need services that are culturally sensitive. In the meantime, seniors continue to struggle. For loners like the Massons, who do not have children or relatives and friends to help them, they face a myriad of problems. Roger Masson says he is overwhelmed with bills. He has to be mindful of how much he uses ordinary amenities, like their fan, and food.
“If I knew I would be living like this, I would have worked and worked until I couldn’t anymore,” said Roger, the tattoo of an eagle on his left arm that he got in Acapulco is a reminder of his days as a cook on cruise ships in the 60s. That would have added one more to the reported 6,936 Haitian seniors 62 and older that the Census reports are still in the labor force.
Nowadays, he and Hortance rely on their pensions, her Social Security benefits, $100 from her union and food stamps worth $98. After taking out $493 for their subsidized $770 rent, there’s nothing left for recreational activities.
“I would like to have someone to help me sort through everything,” Roger Masson said. “I would like it to be easier to move around.”
The Massons’ predicament is by no means unique. Those who work with senior citizens say many of them are having difficult times financially and, because they keep to themselves out of shame, they are less likely to find help.
For Haitian seniors, bogged down by additional problems like not speaking English and complications associated with immigrating, they are more likely to suffer in silence.
“The Haitian community is probably an underserved one,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of the Council on Senior Citizen Services of New York. “The graying of our population is a concern for ethnic populations and what that brings is a lot of poverty. I’m not sure that full recognition is there yet,” Sackman said, of DEFTA’S regard toward immigrant groups.
The center that never was
Paula D. Calixte, of the Flatbush Haitian Center, would have been the coordinator of the senior citizen center if it had begun operating. She said with an advance from DEFTA, they put it an elevator in the building at Veronica Place and Erasmus Street in Flatbush to give access to wheelchair-bound seniors, put in a ramp, began advertising that the center would soon open and took other steps in preparation for the big opening.
But, she said, the plans never materialized. Calixte said DEFTA’s decision to stop the $886,000 grant for recreational and nutritional services came as a surprise.
When Michael Bloomberg was inaugurated as Mayor in 2002 and asked city agencies to reduce their budgets in order to close a deficit by cutting projects that were not operational, the Flatbush Haitian Senior Center turned out to be one of the “sacrificial cows.”
Officials at both organizations say the other one stalled, causing the delay in operating the center. Had they begun providing services, the funds would not have been taken back, said Andrea Cimino, a spokesperson for DEFTA. “It wasn’t operational on time. The deadline was missed. Not only did we not have any funds to keep existing offices open, we didn’t have funds to open new offices,” Cimino added.
Calixte said she had not been aware of any deadline and that progress took a long time because DEFTA had to approve everything they proposed. From the architects who designed the building to the expense vouchers the center presented for reimbursement, she said the agency usually took long in responding.
“It’s really unfair because the Haitian community is really underserved,” Calixte said. “We did everything in our power; the only thing that put the block was DEFTA not approving us. I still receive calls from seniors, but we cannot accommodate them,” she said.
Regardless of who dropped the ball on creating the senior center, the fact is that many Haitian seniors like the Massons are without a place to go once they retire – besides church, sporadic visits to friends’ homes, and barbershops for the men. Without a central place to attract them, they may fall into depression. They end up missing out on opportunities to improve their often financially difficult lives. Issues with immigration, abusive relationships with their adult children, and other areas of their lives also exacerbate the situation, they say.
Philius Nicolas, pastor of the Evangelical Crusade of Fishers of Men, says he had intended to open a senior center, but admits he has been slow in seeking funding.
“Nothing is concretized yet,” Nicolas, 73, said. ”We have the space, but we need the funding. “I really have not pushed for it the way I should have.”
The pastor said many politicians have come to his church, saying that they would help him secure grants to fund a senior program. His predicament is the reverse of the Flatbush Haitian Center: he has the space ready, but no money. He said he needs a volunteer to seek grants and respond to requests for proposals.
Nicolas said about 2,000 seniors frequent his church. Out of that number, 200 come for religious service daily. Besides spiritual nourishment, they receive services at Maimonides Hospital. He and others say they serve seniors informally, by referring them to other groups.
Cimino said nationality is not a factor in determining in which neighborhoods to fund programs, because DEFTA goes by major categories established by the Census Bureau. “We do not track the ethnicities of our seniors beyond the Census categories: White, Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders,” Cimino said. However the Census does provide supplementary files which report that there are 36,928 Haitian seniors living in the United States.
Cimino said there are programs in various neighborhoods that a senior could get to by calling Access-A-Ride, DEFTA’s free pre-arranged transportation service, if he or she prefers a particular center.
Why they don’t come
One such center is the Senior Center at Saint Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Flatbush. Approaching the basement of the church, the sounds of calypso-gospel music, dominoes hitting a table hard and lively chatter floated up the stairs in greeting. Inside the spacious cafeteria, more than 60 black men and women, with varying degrees of gray and white hair, sat around tables.
From the loudspeakers, an upbeat voice sang an encouraging refrain: “Everybody come and celebrate.” As they listened and waited for the $1 lunch to be served, several female senior citizens were busy crocheting and threading red string through white nets in the shape of kites. Men and women at one table were preoccupied with dominoes, one of many games stacked across from the director’s office for them to choose from.
Interim director Estella Philips said 80 to 130 senior citizens – most of them from the Caribbean – are served daily, but only one Haitian is among the regulars. In a neighborhood where Haitians make up a large percentage of the population, the fact seemed surprising.
“We don’t know why they don’t come,” Philips said. “We try to reach out to everyone.”
But community organizers say it is difficult to draw the Haitian seniors out to the centers, and that many end up living isolated from others.
In the Central Brooklyn neighborhoods where many Haitians live, senior centers tend to draw a particular ethnic groups. For example, at St. Gabriel’s, the group is West Indian. In the Dorchester Senior Center, the majority of the participants are Koreans. Others centers nearby have Jews in the majority.
“It’s a bunch of white people in here,” said a 60-year-old at a Flatbush senior center who did not want her name used for fear of being ostracized. “They treat those others better than they treat us.”
She related that during one visit to the senior center, the director came over repeatedly to two Haitian siblings to inquire about the number of portions they had had. The Flatbush resident said the director does not scrutinize others’ eating habits as much.
Haitians feel uncomfortable in some centers, primarily because of the language difference. They do not speak English enough to defend themselves. In Queens, Haitian-Americans United for Progress provides services intermittently, including an English instruction class for seniors during the week.
Cimino said DEFTA’s $5.9 million transportation service is available to seniors to take them to programs outside of their neighborhoods and to other locations.
In June, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council members agreed to provide more money for seniors in the budget for next year, but it is not certain whether Haitians will benefit from the increases to DEFTA’s budget this time around.
Of the fiscal year 2005 Executive Budget adopted by the Mayor and City Council last month, $227 million has been allocated for the Department of the Aging, according to the Independent Budget Office. That’s an increase from the $212.3 million allocated in 2004 and $224.2 for fiscal year 2003.
“We’re still under the constraints of budget cuts,” Cimino said. The Department could not promise to restore funds granted previously. “The goal is to keep what’s open, open.”
In the meantime, the Hortances will continue to stay home, and the Rogers may keep visiting the barbershops.
“I don’t know about these things,” Roger Masson said. “I don’t hear anyone talking about senior centers.”
Sackman, of the Council on Senior Citizen Services of New York, said that by the time city government and community organizations decide to step up, the seniors who need help now may not be around to benefit from them.
