Renton, Washington Print
Joined the AARP Age-Friendly Network:
7/8/2020
Lead Agency: City of Renton Recreation and Neighborhoods Department
Government Agency
Action Plan Download
Renton's Age-Friendly Action Plan will guide the working group through 2025 with a focus on four priority areas: Health and Safety, Communication and Information, Housing, and Transportation. Communication and Information will take precedence, given its foundational importance to other domains, and improving it will improve quality of life for Renton's seniors. The working group will comprise Senior Citizen Advisory Board members and City of Renton staff, and the action items are intended to blend with existing priorities and goals. The second phase of the plan will focus on partnering with community groups to create new workflows.
Action Plan Highlights
Health and Community Services
The objective is to maintain and enhance existing health and safety programs and resources for seniors in Renton, while improving access and awareness of these programs among diverse community members. This will include providing health and community services information in multiple languages, advertising diverse health and safety programs widely, offering health and safety programs and classes in Spanish, maintaining diverse health and safety-related programs offered by the Renton Police Department, and increasing affordable access to healthy, culturally appropriate, easy-to-prepare foods.Communication and Information
The objective is to ensure that information about services, resources, and programming is available in multiple formats, various languages, and can be accessed in an efficient and equitable manner. This includes mailing recreation guides to senior living communities, adding resources to websites, hosting annual events for health and wellness, providing community information in diverse languages, offering programs about accessing technology and understanding fraud, increasing visibility of existing resources, and holding free/pay-what-you-can ethnic lunches. There will also be an increase in accommodations for the hearing impaired and linguistic diversity of staff to support ESL and non-English-speaking residents in accessing City programs.Housing
The objective is to increase awareness and use of existing programs such as utility assistance, minor home repairs, Safe and Healthy Housing, and other housing resources by older adults in Renton to help them age in place. This can be achieved by updating the list of senior living facilities, collaborating with working groups, spreading awareness about King County's utility discount programs, and encouraging Senior Activity Center staff and community volunteers to participate in annual volunteer training to help residents apply for utility assistance.