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City staff outline plan to boost protections for older adults; community groups urge expanded education and legal help
Summary
Human Services staff presented a council consideration request to enhance protections for older adults, citing a high rate of self‑neglect in Bexar County and plans for multilingual resource guides, a research report due Aug. 2026, and outreach during Elder Abuse Awareness Month. Several community groups backed the request and urged legal assistance, solicitation ordinance review, and a local hotline.
Jessica Dovalina, a Human Services Department presenter, told the Public Safety Committee that Bexar County has a comparatively high rate of adult‑protective investigations, reporting roughly 17.5 investigations per 1,000 older adults and that staff coded 92% of investigations as self‑neglect. She said 81% of those cases were recorded as physical neglect and 19% as medical neglect. DHS serves "a little over 22,000 active older adult participants" through senior centers and other programs, Dovalina said.
Dovalina outlined staff recommendations tied to a Council Consideration Request (filed Dec. 5) to enhance protections for older adults, including expanding education and awareness programs, broadening training for volunteers and community partners, distributing multilingual senior-rights and technology guides by May 2026, producing public-service announcements beginning in March, and completing a "status of older adults in San Antonio" study with a planned start in March and delivery in August 2026.
Public commenters — including Joanne Tobias Molina (Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs), Barbara Whitt Howell (AARP), Fernanda Cardenas (GoSawa Foundation; chair, Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs) and Daryl Greer (AARP / South Texas APS community board) — broadly supported the CCR. They urged measures to improve reporting and outreach, expand legal assistance, update solicitation and door‑to‑door rules, and coordinate with financial institutions and federal partners. Daryl Greer cited the FBI IC3 report figure used in his remarks to note a large statewide loss to fraud in 2024 and recommended a local hotline and multilingual materials.
Councilmember Castillo said the CCR grew from constituent complaints in District 5 about predatory door‑to‑door sales, including a cited case in which a resident took a roughly $95,000 loan that later led to a lien; she asked staff to return with interim updates between March and September 2026 and requested that draft marketing and resource materials be shared so council offices can provide feedback.
Staff emphasized that some recommendations — notably any that change which personnel handle specific tasks — may require review of ordinances or collective bargaining considerations. The committee did not adopt an ordinance at the hearing; instead, members asked staff to continue development of resource guides and report back with cost estimates and timetable.
