Building supportive ties and sense of community among the inner-city elderly: the Tenderloin Senior Outreach Project

Abstract

For the low-income elderly residents of America's single room occupancy (SRO) hotels, poor health, social isolation, and powerlessness often are intimately connected. This article presents a case study of an attempt to address these interrelated problems by fostering social support and social action organizing among elderly residents of San Francisco's Tenderloin hotels. Following a brief look at the parameters of the problem, an overview of the Tenderloin Senior Outreach Project (TSOP) is presented. The Project's theoretical base is described, followed by a brief account of TSOPs genesis and growth from an informal University-sponsored project to a privately incorporated community-based organization. Examples of individual and community empowerment through TSOP are presented, as is a look at some of the dilemmas and compromises that are encountered as a community group trades its grassroots status for a more formal and bureaucratized structure. Problems in the areas of indigenous leadership development and community versus funding agency agendas are examined, as is the utility of combining social action and social planning approaches to community organizing. Finally, the potentials and limitations of Freire's "education for critical consciousness" as an organizing tool in this environmental context are discussed, with implications drawn for other projects attempting to build self-reliance and community cohesion among inner-city populations.