Sheraden Healthy Active Living Center, Sheraden: 720 Sherwood Avenue
The “senior center” concept is a surprising 82 years young. A visit to any of Pittsburgh’s Healthy Active Living Centers (HAL) would undoubtedly introduce you to someone born in 1943, the year this specialized service was first offered. (Bronx, NY, takes the trailblazing credit, while the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would wait nearly a decade before following their lead.)
HALs, like this one in Sheraden, located next door to the public library, offer social programming tailored to neighborhood interests but also provide some standard services, such as access to healthy food, connections to health care and human services, and transportation assistance. Every reasonable and marginally empathetic person would agree these are good and necessary for well-being and should be available to all the city’s elders.
In Pittsburgh, HALs are funded through federal, county, and city funds that provide staffing, building operations, and programming. Looking to the future, that funding may become increasingly tenuous. I have to wonder (and worry) what happens if the city’s HALs can no longer provide a healthy lunch or social programming or need to reduce their hours or days of operation. I can envision several scenarios, and none of them are very positive.
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