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Albany resident Joanna Selby was no stranger to the issues of the elderly when she was appointed by Gov. Gray Davis to the Commission on Aging Dec. 4.  

Selby, 69, volunteered at the North Berkeley Senior center between 1986 and 1996 after retiring from a string of government jobs, which included a position at the U.S. Forest Service in Berkeley. In 1995, she applied to go to a White House Conference on Aging and was selected as the Alameda County delegate at the five-day conference in Washington, D.C.  

Selby, who immigrated to the United States from Korea in 1958, said all of her volunteering had to take a back seat after she was appointed to the Commission on Aging of Alameda County in 1996. She said she feels that it’s important that older people have a representative because they often feel that they don’t have anything to do and will stay inside their homes instead of venturing out into their communities. She feels it’s important to encourage older people to be independent as long as they can. “It allows people to enjoy their lives.”  

As a state commissioner, Selby deals will senior issues including health care, mental health care, housing, financial security and transportation.  

She serves on the commission’s transportation committee and said the committee is trying to deal with the unique problems facing seniors who live in rural areas where public transportation is not readily available. She said these people often have to rely on friends or neighbors for transportation, and the committee is trying to change that and balance suburban and urban public transportation funding.  

Selby also serves as the chair of PAPCO, the Paratransit Planning Advisory Committee, which works on issues dealing with BART, AC Transit, Paratransit, bicycle commuting, open space, and freeway and highway expansion. She has served on the committee since 1996.  

Selby said that housing is a major issue for the elderly in California because of a lack of low-income housing in the state. She said the solution is to get land and money, but said the land must come first. And because senior housing can’t be located in isolated areas, they need to obtain land in urban areas. “Urban areas are so well developed, it’s hard to find places to build,” Selby said Thursday. As a result, Selby said the number of homeless elderly is increasing. She also said that some seniors live on such a low fixed-income that they have too little money to qualify for low-income housing. 

Selby said she would like to see a universal health care plan because when people don’t have health care available to them and are ill they will simply get sicker and sicker.  

She said that universal health care is especially important for seniors because it makes health care preventative, rather than reactive. “That way you don’t have to wait until something bad happens.”  

Selby is a busy woman these days, with up to five meetings in one day sometimes. She says she enjoys being so active. “I say I have a full blossoming life,” she said. “I feel sorry for older people who don’t do anything. When I talk to older people, I say ‘get up, have your breakfast and go for a walk. Don’t stay home and look at the four walls.’ ”