Neighbors Helping Neighbors Stay in their Homes
By Ed Hersh
In 2009, mourning the death of her mother and upset about the care she had received in a nursing home in the last years of her life, Morningside Heights resident and college teacher Irene Zola met with a few friends for coffee at the storied Hungarian Pastry Shop at 111th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
In the nursing home, she said, “there were so many mistakes in care, the long shifts, the low pay.” Her idea: start a “neighborhood network” of volunteers to help the elderly stay in their homes for as long as possible. They soon set up a table on Broadway and signed up seven people, as she put it, “not professionals, just people who wanted to help.”
In the thirteen years since, that card table on Broadway has grown into LiLY — Lifeforce In Later Years — a nonprofit, neighbor-to-neighbor organization where over 100 volunteers serve more than 250 elderly residents in Morningside Heights and, since 2016, West Harlem. They provide companionship, help with simple chores, such as accompanying them to medical appointments, and sometimes more.
“Sometimes we open an apartment door and see things we’d never seen before, like vermin and hoarding,” Zola says. That’s why the organization also connects seniors with social services, home care, and other resources when needed.
