Age-Friendly South Elgin

The Village of South Elgin has launched two different but parallel initiatives to build a more age-friendly community!

We were selected as one of five communities in Chicagoland (along with Aurora, Carol Stream, South Holland and Schiller Park) to participate in the Aging in a Changing Region program. As a selected community by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus with funding by the Retirement Research Foundation, the program evaluates and develops recommendations regarding how South Elgin can support older adult residents as they Age-in-Community.

In addition, South Elgin became the first municipality in Kane County recognized by AARP as an Age-Friendly Community! The population of South Elgin is growing in diversity and in the number of older adults. The US Census Bureau predicts that by 2030, twenty percent of the US population will be age 65 or older. South Elgin’s projected numbers look quite similar. As a result of this shift in population, communities like ours face new issues and opportunities requiring attention, such as: 

• Services/facilities not designed for older residents
• Aging housing stock and aging homeowners with more limited resources for maintenance and upkeep
• Changing transportation needs
• Different concerns about personal safety and usage of first responder services
• Increased interest in civic engagement and social connections

Through both of these initiatives, the Village commits to: establishing a way to include older residents in all stages of age-friendly planning and implementation; conduct a needs assessment through surveys and focus group meetings; develop an action and evaluation plan based on assessment results; work toward achieving the identified goals. 

Thank you to the 257 people who completed our recent Age-in-Community questionnaire! We are continuing to gather insights and information from these responses as well as focus group sessions, and will update this page as necessary with survey results and our next steps forward!