ELDERLY ORPHANS: SANTA BARBARA'S SOLUTION TO AGING, SHOCKER!

Noozhawk, in a rare moment of reporting something beyond the county’s latest avocado toast trend, informs us that the 'Family Service Agency' is now the designated Area Agency on Aging for our region. Translation: The California Department of Aging, a state apparatus seemingly designed to generate acronyms and paperwork, has blessed another local non-profit with a shiny new title and, presumably, a fresh torrent of taxpayer dollars.

One has to wonder if the ‘Family Service Agency’ title itself isn't a bit of a misnomer when they’re primarily focused on the aging. Perhaps 'Elderly Service Agency' was too on-the-nose? Or maybe 'Bureaucracy for the Bewildered' was already taken. This is precisely the kind of centralized, top-down 'solution' progressives adore: instead of empowering families to care for their own, or promoting private sector innovations, we get another layer of state-mandated oversight and coordination. It’s a classic move – create a problem by over-regulating, then fund an agency to 'fix' it.

What Noozhawk conveniently overlooks, of course, is the labyrinthine path of public funds and the ever-expanding administrative costs associated with such designations. When exactly did 'supporting aging well at home' become such a complex endeavor that it requires an entire state department to designate a regional agency to coordinate it? What were these 'families' doing before? Probably managing just fine, thank you very much, before the progressive urge to 'help' turned basic human care into an industry. Rest assured, the only thing guaranteed to age well in this scenario are the budgets of the agencies involved.