Daily Business Report-Aug. 23, 2019
San Diego’s senior population is rising, but the community is not ready for change, according to the assessment.
Report says county’s senior centers
unprepared to deal with expected
massive growth in senior population
Senior citizen centers in San Diego County are underfunded, understaffed, under-utilized and unprepared to deal with a wave of new seniors expected to climb to nearly 1 million by the year 2030.
Those are some of the findings of a newly released assessment by the San Diego Seniors Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed in 2017.
The assessment also found that the 28 senior centers in the region serve less than 8 percent of the total senior populations in their areas, nearly a quarter of them have no full-time employees and 21of the centers were built more than 30 years ago.
“The objective of this report is to call out and inspire community leaders, politicians and philanthropists to take action now and create solutions to improve and enrich the lives of San Diego’s older adults,” says Bob Kelly, president and CEO of the San Diego Seniors Community Foundation.
San Diego’s senior population is rising, but the community is not ready for change, according to the assessment. In San Diego County, there are more than 468,071 people over the age of 65, representing almost 14 percent of the county’s total population of 3.3 million. (U.S. Census Bureau). By the year 2030, San Diego’s population of adults age 60 and older will skyrocket to nearly 1 million. Age-related trends also predict seniors will soon outnumber children and their primary caregivers, yet the community is unprepared to provide these seniors with the care and services they need the most.
“This influx will strain the already fragile network of existing services for seniors, increasing the risk of social isolation and many other concerns,” says Ted Chan, board chairman of the San Diego Seniors Community Foundation. “Society is not ready to deal with the reality that the national and local infrastructure is inadequate and ill-equipped to effectively serve a burgeoning senior population.”
The assessment report, which was funded by the Gary and Mary West Foundation, concluded that localized community-based senior centers should be at the core of senior infrastructure development, serving as critical hubs that focus on the total well-being of older adults. All senior centers, it said, should include outreach programs to identify “senior orphans” who are socially isolated and may lack access to needed services. Senior orphans are seniors that lack nearby relatives, never had children, never got married, experienced divorce, or even in some cases, the death of a child. These are elderly men and women who are alone and have no one to care for them as they age. This group is the most vulnerable subset of the aging population, and every senior orphan needs someone they can turn to and trust.
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Insurers cancelled 14,000 homeowner policies last year
Last year, insurance companies cancelled 14,225 homeowners policies across San Diego, in part due to rising wildfire risk, according to new data from the state’s Department of Insurance.
The data gives perhaps the clearest picture yet of how insurance companies are reacting to rising wildfire risk. Statewide, insurers cancelled – the industry term is “non-renewed” – policies for nearly 170,000 homeowners.
While that is quite a lot of homes, there are over eight million homes in the state and homeowners themselves were far more likely to change insurers than insurers were to dump homeowners. About 730,000 homeowners switched insurance companies or decided not to renew their own policy in 2018, according to the department.
Over the past four years, there’s been an upward tick in non-renewals but nothing major. In 2015, for instance, insurers decided not to renew 13,670 policies in San Diego.
However, the data does not capture the reaction by insurers following last November’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history.
In a statement, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said the data should be a wake-up call because trouble finding insurance can “create a domino effect for the local economy, affecting home sales and property taxes.”
Home insurance policies generally last a year and are required for anyone with a mortgage.
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PriceSmart to build new
warehouse club in Colombia
PriceSmart Inc. says it acquired approximately 111,000 square feet of land in Colombia where it plans to construct its 47th warehouse club. This club will be located within the city of Bogota, Colombia.
“Securing our third location in the Bogota metropolitan area underscores our commitment to growth in this important market. The 170th Street Bogota Club will be the 8th club in Colombia and our fourth currently under development, including clubs in Guatemala, Panama, and Costa Rica,” said Sherry Bahrambeygui, CEO of PriceSmart.
The 170th Street Bogota club is expected to open in the fall of 2020.
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Keller Williams Realty La Mesa
relocates to Allied Plaza Building
Keller Williams Realty La Mesa has moved its offices to the top floor (Suite 700) of the Allied Plaza Building located at 7777 Alvarado Road in La Mesa. One of the first Keller Williams locations in San Diego County, the Keller Williams Realty La Mesa team is experiencing a growth period, with 100 active agents and a goal of increasing by another 20 percent in the next six to 12 months.
Keller Williams Realty La Mesa will have 10,000 square feet of usable space in the new location; 6,000 square feet of dedicated private office suites; and access to 4,000 square feet of co-working, training and presentation space, including a state-of-the-art multimedia room.
Originally founded in 2003, Keller Williams Realty La Mesa was previously located in downtown La Mesa and had outgrown the space.
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Port of San Diego receives procurement
award for 11th consecutive year
For the 11th straight year, the Port of San Diego has received the prestigious National Procurement Institute’s (NPI) Achievement of Excellence (AEP) in Procurement Award.
The AEP Awards started in 1995 as a program designed to recognize organizational excellence in public procurement. The AEP is earned by those organizations that demonstrate excellence by obtaining a high score based on standardized criteria designed to measure innovation, professionalism, productivity, e-procurement and leadership attributes of the procurement organization.
NPI will be holding its annual conference in Las Vegas in October, where the Port’s Procurement Department will be officially recognized for receiving the award.
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App allows inspectors to find gas pump skimmers faster
UC San Diego News Center
A team of computer scientists at UC San Diego and the University of Illinois has developed an app that allows state and federal inspectors to detect devices that criminals install in gas pumps to steal consumer credit and debit card data. The devices, known as skimmers, use Bluetooth to transmit the data they steal.
“All criminals have to do is download the data from the comfort of their vehicle,” said Nishant Bhaskar, a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of California San Diego and the study’s first author.
The app, called Bluetana, detects the Bluetooth signature of the skimmers, and allows inspectors to find the devices without needing to open up the gas pumps.
Bluetana was developed with technical input from the United States Secret Service and is only available to gas pump inspectors. It will not be available to the general public. It is now used by agencies in several states.
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Asana Partners acquires The Beacon La Costa for $57.6 million
Asana Partners has acquired The Beacon La Costa, a 123,000-square-foot upscale retail center located at 7710-7770 El Camino Real in Carlsbad, for $57.6 million. The property is anchored by the first Equinox in San Diego. The selling price was not disclosed.
JLL’s Geoff Tranchina and Jose Carrazana represented the buyer.
