Loretta Copeland, 81, of Harlem, needs home care five days a week. Aides help her move, bathe, cook, and sleep safely — all the while assuaging her loneliness. Yet due to New York’s home care labor shortages, currently the worst in the nation, Copeland gets support only one or two days a week. “Sometimes I feel angry. I worked all my life, and now I can’t even get help. That bothers me.”
Covid-19 deepened the chasms of inequality in New York, particularly for givers and receivers of care. Leaders’ negligent approach to the pandemic ravaged the state’s nursing homes, killing upwards of 15,000 residents. Hundreds of thousands of high-risk, older, or disabled residents, who rely on home care instead of institutions, currently contend with a nearly 20 percent shortfall in labor. And hundreds of thousands of home care workers are undercompensated and exhausted.
This week, in testimony before a joint legislative budget hearing and on a call with Inequality.org, New York Caring Majority Coalition and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice leader Bobbie Sackman spoke in plain terms: “We’re an aging society. We have more people with disabilities and illnesses because of Covid-19. We have family caregivers providing $31 billion of free care and they need help. And most importantly, we have home care workers – women of color and immigrant women — working for poverty-level wages. That is a state policy of neglect and the feminization of poverty. And it has to end now.”
Enter the Fair...
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