In late January, Darwin Tepe walked the corridors of the Florida Capitol carrying a one-page document that, he believed, could change how lawmakers think about aging.

From January 25 to 29, Tepe and Senior Friendship Centers leadership moved between offices in Tallahassee, meeting with senators and representatives in 10- to 15-minute sessions. At their side was a lobbying firm, retained year-round to track bills, map legislative priorities and match the organization with lawmakers whose districts and interests aligned with elder care services. Tepe says his goal was not to describe need, but to explain value. In other words, he wasn't making a plea. He was showing his math.

Using Senior Friendship Centers as a case study, Tepe says, "What we’re producing is more than the ask,” Tepe says. “We generate more economic activity than what we’re asking for. This is the most fiscally responsible thing to do with these tax dollars.”

The argument lands in a state where aging is a defining character trait. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population 2024 county-level estimates, in Sarasota County, nearly four in 10 residents are 65 or older, one of the highest proportions in the state. In neighboring Manatee County, more than one in four residents falls into the same age group. Together, the two counties form one of Florida’s most age-concentrated regions, magnifying the economic consequences of how older adults are housed and cared for.

Tepe is the author of a new economic impact report examining home- and community-based care programs operated by Senior Friendship Centers, which serves older adults across Sarasota, Lee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties. The report estimates that keeping seniors at home, rather than in nursing homes, produces roughly $200 million a year in economic benefit—a striking figure, given Senior Friendship Centers' annual budget of about $20 million.

According to Tepe's analysis, Senior Friendship Centers served 968 seniors through its home- and community-based programs during the 2023–2024 fiscal year, preventing premature placement in nursing homes or assisted living facilities in all cases evaluated. The report estimates that the average annual cost of a private nursing home room in Sarasota County is $144,000, compared with approximately $17,000 per senior per year for services delivered through SFC. That translates into an estimated $123 million in taxpayer savings in just one year. When those savings were redeployed into other areas of the economy, the report applied a 1.25 economic multiplier, producing an estimated $153 million in total economic activity, in addition to $47 million in annual tax revenue across federal, state and local levels.

In practical terms, the difference between placing one older adult in a nursing home and supporting that same person at home is enough to pay for dozens of additional meals, home visits and case management hours—and still leave public dollars circulating back into the local economy. Tepe says the report was designed to speak a language legislators rarely hear from nonprofits.

“They’re used to hearing testimonials and emotional stories," he says. “We didn’t do that. Sure, we speak to the human part, but my report tells them how it’s going to make them money. It’s about value, not emotion.” That distinction mattered in Tallahassee.

“Legislators asked questions about the methodology and the returns. A number of them told us it was the most rigorous report they’d seen on aging services,” Tepe says. Among the lawmakers they met was Rep. Allison Tant, who Tepe says told him the report was the strongest document she had reviewed on aging services. They also met with officials connected to the Department of Elder Affairs and with legislators representing districts across all four counties SFC serves.

Senior Friendship Centers' delegation included its president and CEO Erin McLeod, who was wearing two hats: head of the organization and president of the Florida Council on Aging. The group made two primary requests. One was an appropriations request for capital infrastructure funding in Venice and Sarasota, totaling $790,000. The other was broader: a 10 percent increase in statewide funding for home- and community-based care contracts, administered through Florida’s 11 Area Agencies on Aging.

The request amounts to roughly $23 million statewide, a figure Tepe frames as modest compared with the economic return—especially in regions like Sarasota and Manatee, where the aging curve is already steep.

What makes the pitch unusual, Tepe says, is that it doesn’t rely on prevention alone. Legislators, he explains, don’t budget on money that might be saved years from now.

“They’ve already budgeted to lose to Medicaid,” he says. “We can’t just say, ‘Invest in us because we save Medicaid dollars.’ What they like about this that it generates new money.”

That argument—that avoided nursing home spending doesn’t disappear, but instead re-enters the economy through jobs, infrastructure and services—became the core of his presentation. “The [legislature] has to spend that money,” Tepe says. “That money changes hands. More dollars are being spent. That’s the real sale.”

The report arrives as Florida’s senior population continues to grow and nursing home capacity tightens. Costs rise annually. Beds per capita have declined over the past decade. Tepe warned that without scaling home- and community-based services, the consequences could be severe.

“The infrastructure can’t handle the largest amount of older people in history,” he says.

 The stakes of that argument are not theoretical for people like Anne Grande.

Grande is 105 years old. She attends SFC functions twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays. She dances “a few dances with a couple of dudes,” she says, then goes home. 

“I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t go anywhere. I sat in my chair. And I was lonesome,” Grande says of the period before she found the center. She remembers thinking, "You better do something to get me out of here, or I’ll go crazy.”

She began attending Senior Friendship Centers events at age 89, after her children found the center online. “Everybody was willing to help,” she says. In 2022, when her family couldn’t leave her alone during a vacation, she entered an assisted living facility. She stayed for 15 months. She says the people were kind. The room was nice. (The food, she notes, was not.) But that’s not why she left.

“We ran out of money,” she says. So she returned home and started going back to SFC. “It feels great,” Grande says. “I was my own boss. Nobody tells me what to do. I am a free agent. I’m content the way I am.”

Her daughter-in-law, Nova Grande, says the financial reality families face often runs counter to public policy. “Assisted living is very good, but it’s very expensive,” Nova says. “But living at home, we don’t get any financial support. It’s still all on us.”

What SFC provides, Nova says, is stability. “It gave us a place where we knew she was safe and that there were people to help her, have fun and laugh with,” she says.

“When you’re alone all day, it sends your mind screwy," Grande says. SFC is the difference between a day spent alone in a chair and one shaped by conversation, movement and routine—the small interventions that make independence possible. 

Back in Tallahassee, the fate of Senior Friendship Centers' funding requests now rests with legislative committees and, eventually, Gov. Ron DeSantis. Last year, similar funding requests passed both chambers before being vetoed. Tepe knows that could happen again.

“Worst case, if it doesn’t go through, we’ll raise the money ourselves,” he says. Regardless, he sees the report as something larger than a single budget cycle. “I want this way of thinking to be coveted,” he says. “It’s a paradigm shift—talking about [return on investment], public good and taxpayer dollars. It’s literally life and death, and we’re all participating in aging at the same rate.”

For Grande, the math is not abstract. “The only pleasure I get is coming here,” she says. “That’s my life.”