Caring For Those Who Care

Long term care workers provide lifesustaining care for seniors and people with disabilities throughout California who need personal assistance to meet their most basic daily needs.

In California, approximately 80 percent of long term care workers are women of predominately Latino, African-American, Armenian and Asian descent. Most caregivers are forced to take on multiple jobs just to maintain a roof over their heads, often forgoing other basic necessities to compensate for the high costs of shelter.

Homecare Workers
Roughly 300,000 low-income seniors and people with disabilities depend on the state's homecare workers to remain safely and independently in their homes. The critical health care assistance caregivers provide includes: bathing, feeding and medication dispensation, along with services like housecleaning, cooking, transportation to doctor's appointments, and careful monitoring of those who need close supervision.

Nursing Home Workers
Nursing home workers provide similar care, but often in understaffed conditions. SEIU Local 434B represents nurses, cooks, laundry workers, maintenance staff and housekeepers in nursing homes.

Struggling to Provide
California's need for long term care is growing at a tremendous rate, yet turnover of caregivers has reached dangerous proportions as workers increasingly leave the profession in search of better paying jobs that will provide them with access to the American dream of home ownership and security. Our program will help stabilize long term care in your communities.

The Low-Wage Struggle

While long term care workers ensure the safety and dignity of the seniors and people with disabilities for whom they care, caregivers lack the housing options to secure their own family's dignity and safety.

Long term caregivers often have no options but to live in crowded, substandard housing that can endanger the health and safety of its occupants. The high cost of housing and shrinking availability of affordable rents mean most caregivers have to pay more than half of their income for shelter, forcing them to make life-threatening choices between healthcare, childcare, food, or a roof over their heads.

This instability in housing puts our seniors and persons with disabilities at risk: many workers care for their clients in their own homes while the rest are likely to leave the field in search of jobs that will help them find a better future.

Investing in long term care worker housing will help secure California's workforce to meet the increasing demand for care for our seniors and people with disabilities. And for those caregivers who live with their client, it will ensure the safety of all involved.