Bergen County, N.J.’s sizable senior population often isn’t recognized for being the important and growing force that it is and will continue to be in many suburban towns, a panel of academics and other experts say.

“Older people are staying in suburbia, and they want to be a part of suburbia,” said Philip Dolce, history professor and an organizer of the Seniors in Suburbia conference held in early November at Bergen Community College in Paramus, N.J.

One of a series of seminars that the college has been hosting to examine life in the county, the conference drew nearly 200 people eager to talk about both the challenges and the appeal of growing old in the communities where they raised their children.

Bergen County has 137,000 residents over the age of 65, representing 15 percent of its total population.

With that percentage likely to soar now that the baby-boom generation is beginning to reach the Social Security rolls, Dolce said it’s worth exploring whether “good places to grow up in are not necessarily good places to grow old in.”

In addition to listening to panelists talk about everything from housing and transportation needs to the opportunities for seniors to take leadership and helping-hand roles in their communities, participants were polled on their views.

Entering their answers on clickers distributed to the audience, 54 percent cited the reason for staying in the suburbs as the desire to stay close to family. Only 5 percent said they were remaining because they couldn’t sell their house in the current economy.

In the past, it was assumed that older couples would want to move out of the suburbs when their children left home. But Lita Talbot, a health-care consultant, said her research has found that people often don’t want to sever ties to places where they’ve spent so much of their lives, even if staying becomes less convenient and more costly.

“You have established yourself in the community, you have contributed to the community, and you want to remain here,” said Talbot, one of the panelists.

THE ‘INVISIBLE’ PEOPLE

Another instant poll question asked: “How are seniors primarily looked upon in suburbia?” The largest segment of the audience — 44 percent — chose Answer No. 3: “As an invisible part of the community.”

One panelist, Bob Norelli, said that perception may be widespread because the senior community is often portrayed as being a population in need rather than as a population that has something to offer in a community.

“We are a part of the community,” said Norelli, who heads Hobbyists Unlimited, which has about 450 seniors as members. “We’re not invisible. We are capable of handling ourselves in the community. We are capable of helping others in the community.”

Norelli pointed out that suburbia’s shortage of affordable housing and limited public transportation are often cited as senior issues when they are impediments for any age group.

“We are sitting here talking about problems that are ours, but they are not really just ours,” Norelli said.

Mark Feldman, a 65-year-old who attended the conference, agreed that there is often a divide between older and younger residents in the suburbs.

Some of the issues that make living in the suburbs challenging for older residents are the high property taxes and the zoning laws that prevent the building of more affordable apartments and town houses, Feldman said.

But younger residents sometimes only hear those issues as being antagonistic to their goals of having well-funded and less-crowded schools, Feldman said. “It becomes an ‘us against them’ when it shouldn’t be.

“What we need is to have some empathy and understanding for the needs of everyone in the community,” Feldman said. “You can’t just have it be that older people feel like their only choice is to move because they can’t afford to stay where they are.”

By Colleen Diskin

The Record (Hackensack N.J.)