Interview with Crystal Carr Townsend of The Washington Home

The Washington Home is the Service Partner Honoree at the 2025 Leadership in Aging. The Washington Home has been a longtime DC institution, supporting older adults as a nursing home and hospice provider since 1888; since becoming a foundation in 2020, The Washington Home has tackled hunger and isolation in Washington, DC with a variety of strategic investments.

Ahead of Leadership in Aging, Seabury sat down with Crystal Carr Townsend, CEO of the Washington Home, to learn more about their work and why hunger in particular is such a pressing issue for DC seniors.

What is the mission of The Washington Home?

The mission of The Washington Home is to provide funding to entities that create and deliver innovative, compassionate and well-managed programs to improve the quality of life for elderly and/or terminally ill residents in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. We invest in local, community efforts to strategically address social isolation, caregiver support, food insecurity, and access to specialized health care.

TWH became a private foundation in 2020. Prior to this, since our inception in 1888 TWH had a long history of providing hospice care and serving the critically ill and the older adult community in the District and we continue to honor this legacy through our work today.

The other area is around Food Insecurity: 13% of older adults live in a “food desert,” 12,000 older adults across the DC area are food insecure. Knowing what the health consequences are of not having access to healthy foods, or enough food, that is a part of our focus area to address as well.

And then addressing and supporting efforts for mitigating social isolation through integrated approaches. Knowing the impact that social emotional wellness has on our community, we have 74% of older adults living alone, what we call “aging solo” – how do we help support access to vital activities, care & case management, and connectivity within the community to thrive.

At The Washington Home, we want to improve the quality of life for older adults and every day we ask ourselves, how do we invest in the delivery of innovative, compassionate, and well-managed programs that will do that?

Why is it so important to address senior hunger right now?

The number of older people living in a food desert – 36,000 is an incredible number of people without access to healthy food.

There are many strategies for addressing this challenge that help meet the unique needs of communities, households, and individuals. It is not a one size fits all solution and sometimes a layered response.  One piece that’s so important in addressing hunger is the community meals that meet the immediate food needs as well as help to address social isolation and provide opportunities to bring in other resources and engage the members like Seabury is doing.

There is also the aspect of ensuring there’s healthy food that can be accessed at home, whether it’s through fresh groceries or a meal delivery, especially for those who might be living alone and find cooking overwhelming or dealing with cognitive impairment, health issues, and mobility challenges…

Food is essential for health outcomes for older adults and we at the Foundation know that food is medicine.

Because whether we’re looking at it as improving healthier living, addressing social isolation, stabilizing A1C3 levels, achieving better BMI levels, etc, we know that health is such a strong indicator for well-being.

There are so many great partners working in this space ensuring our community has access to fresh food, focusing on our connection to the agricultural community, while there are other organizations that are really integrated with our healthcare system. 

For example: we have food pantries with federally qualified health centers that are actually able to refer their patients to the pantry ensuring access to healthy foods, and the health centers can measure the changes in their patients’ health outcomes. Other organizations focus on medically tailored meals specific to chronic disease management that are also tied to health outcomes.  There are also food prescription programs and pop-up food pantries and grocery delivery that increase access to healthy foods.

What do you think are the root causes of food insecurity for older adults in the District?

First: food is expensive.

And while it’s on all of us to encourage individuals to enroll in benefits and programs which can help alleviate some of that cost burden, we also know it won’t be sufficient to meet an individual or household’s needs in a month and that there’s a gap there.

We also know what kind of income it takes to live in the District. There is a delta between what it takes to survive in the District of Columbia and what residents earn, particularly if they have a fixed income. These structural deficits lead people to make vital choices every day about what they’re going to be spending their limited income on. Sometimes it’s rent, paying utilities, buying food, covering healthcare costs – all hard choices…

So as an investor with limited resources, what is The Washington Home’s role in combating food insecurity in older adults?

There are a couple of strategies: one is helping to create a food security network. We’ve been working for the last couple of years to bring together the food providers that are addressing food insecurity needs and curate a food insecurity map for older adults. We’re really trying to look at where people are accessing services and where services are being provided. Then we overlay other socio-economic indicators so we can ascertain who’s doing what and where – that ecosystem mapping is a vital first step to tackling the next question: how do we strategize together? What are some of the big barriers for ensuring older adults have access to healthy foods?

One of the big areas is transportation access. So while we might have resources available in the community, it’s still a challenge for many reasons for individuals to access those resources whether it be lack of mobility, cognitive impairment, safety, or a host of other reasons that are prohibiting individuals from accessing services. But one area we keep hearing about is that safe, reliable transportation that centers around older adults is extremely important. 

So for us as an investor it’s looking at: how do we help do the ecosystem mapping, identify the problem, identify where we are in addressing the problem, continue to look at what are the barriers and root causes to us actually being able to solve the problem, and then the next phase: how do we create efficiencies, collaborations, and partnerships? Because we are all better when we are doing better together.

For example, Seabury has excellent transportation resources; how can this infrastructure help the food partners better meet the food security challenge? So here you have this incredible asset and resource that could be enhanced to scale the capacity for others to meet our older adult residents’ food security needs.

As a collaborator and convener, that’s our role – to enhance. 

How do you see The Washington Home and Seabury partnering together to address food insecurity?

So it’s very interesting that Seabury represents everything that we’ve been talking about. There is a continuum – Seabury is a Lead Agency providing community meals, and supporting that is one obvious way we’re addressing food insecurity together.

But there’s also the [Model Cities] Senior Wellness Center that’s providing access to healthy food during those core hours. That’s another area, and then you’re partnering with others like the Capital Area Food Bank to bring in supplemental groceries. It’s this continuum – there isn’t one element that will meet the food insecurity of the whole household, but it’s through your collaborations and referral services that you’re ensuring members have access to the necessary food providers and partners to meet their household needs. Also the transportation aspect we just discussed.

What does it mean for The Washington Home to be an honoree at Leadership in Aging?

As I mentioned earlier, The Washington Home has a long legacy in Washington, DC of serving the older adult community and those with critical illness, and it is just incredible that this legacy is being recognized in such a way with a fabulous partner. We’re very grateful that our long history of being a leader and serving the older adult community is being recognized in such a way.

What inspired you to join The Washington Home?

When I looked at The Washington Home and all that they were doing to change the delivery models within the healthcare, food, and caregiving systems to better serve older adults through their investments – I was inspired. Our work centers the older adult experience, giving immense focus to addressing the needs of the fastest growing population in our community, ensuring that there is respect and dignity, and a thriving community for older adults. And then I got to meet the fabulous board and team that has such tremendous passion for the work we do.

What are the biggest misconceptions about aging and what do you think we can do to change those misconceptions?

We need to reframe our image of aging as a society. I am inspired each time I go out into the community and talk with residents and leave feeling like I want to be like them when I grow up. I think helping society see how they can continue to accomplish that in the next half of their lives is vital to countering the misconceptions.

Aging is thriving, invigorating, and there is no age limit on fun, getting educated, making new friends, or learning how to give back differently to your community. 

What impact is The Washington Home making in addressing senior hunger?

In Fiscal Year 2024, through our investments we increased coverage to serve aggregately 32,000 older adults in need of nourishing food. Some of these numbers include older adults receiving a couple different resources to have their food security needs met.

We invested over $1,000,000 last year to address access to healthy foods, and $445,000 went to healthy food access, $200,000 went to home meal delivery, and $350,000 went to community meals. 

What advice would you give to individuals who are looking to advocate for older adults in their communities, where should they start?

One of the areas that we’re seeing as a great opportunity is really with volunteerism. And in connectivity, there’s this huge Village movement we’re hoping to see scale so that it enters every community.

Volunteerism is an opportunity to get to know older adults and their needs, whether it’s around transportation to food access, or to a doctor’s appointment, or helping them connect to a [senior] wellness center or going to their yoga classes. I think all those efforts serve as a voice to older adults through action and be a part of the solution.

Another way to serve, not through direct volunteering, is to serve on Boards that serve older adults. I always look at it: how do you give your time, treasure, and talents to causes that you believe in? 

We’re at such a confluence of needs at the moment, with affordable housing and hunger – there’s a lot of scarcity but also everything’s more expensive. What can people do right now to be most impactful?

As you said it’s multi-layered. No one truly knows right now all the areas that will be impacted or how they’ll be impacted, we just know that impact is happening. So I think this is the time to begin strategizing now on what are the things we most want to keep and hold on to. What are the things that we’re going to say have to stay in place for our community?

And then how do we all collaborate and join in on a plan? Not just one organization at a time, it’s going to have to be the whole sector coming together. How do we preserve what we want to keep in our community? 

What is most important for you as you think about getting older?

I want the opportunity to remain engaged in the community, to give back in an impactful way, to be safe, to have access to quality healthcare, and still be able to take care of my family and feel vital. Maximize life, whether it’s through engagement or activities, or being able to volunteer. 

When I look at the model of the [senior] wellness centers that’s happening where the members aren’t just going to programming, they’re helping to create programming, and being engaged in the process, it is the members that “make” the wellness center with staff serving as facilitators and guides. I want an environment when I get older that creates that, where I can still have agency, respect given, and dignity.