$50 a Month Since 1986. Nursing Home Residents Deserve Better. Sign On to Increase Personal Needs Allowance
Imagine living on $50 a month. Not for rent or food or medicine, but for everything else that makes a life: a haircut, a birthday card for a grandchild, a phone plan to call the people you love, a new pair of shoes.
That is the reality for New Yorkers living in nursing homes. When a resident's care is paid for through Medicaid, nearly all of their Social Security goes toward the cost of that care. What they keep is called the Personal Needs Allowance, or PNA. In New York, it is $50 a month. It has not been increased since 1986.
Forty years. Everything else has gotten more expensive. The PNA has stayed frozen, and New York now sits behind 31 other states.
Gray Panthers has fought for the dignity of nursing home residents since Maggie Kuhn's time. This is exactly the kind of quiet injustice we exist to name out loud. A $50 allowance treats residents as people to be maintained rather than people who still have lives to live.
That is why Gray Panthers NYC is joining LiveOn NY, the Center for Elder Law & Justice, and partner organizations across the state in calling on Governor Hochul to raise the PNA to $200 in the Executive Budget.
This is a fix that costs the state very little and means everything to the people it touches. Now the Governor needs to hear that New Yorkers are paying attention.
Add your name. Organizations and individuals can sign on here by Thursday, September 25 at 4pm. You can read more about the campaign here.
Age justice means dignity at every stage of life, including inside a nursing home. Let's get this done.
Read more about this topic: The $50 New York Nursing Home Allowance Hasn’t Changed Since Reagan Was President
