As the Baby Boomer generation ages, many are concerned about the availability of nursing homes, memory care, and other senior living facilities. 

“I think in the next 20 years, Minnesota’s population ages significantly, to the point where it’s almost scary. If we don’t act now, we’re going to really find some very challenging situations in the future,” said Duluth Health Services Administrator Chester Fishel. “Somebody needs care because they can’t take care of themselves. What do you do? You can’t leave them on the street. You can’t leave them at home to fall and hurt themselves.”

The aging services sector is already facing workforce struggles, competing against other healthcare facilities with better pay.

“Unfortunately, our funding always depends on us going back to the legislature for more and more money. It’s just the structure of how we are paid,” said St. Francis Health Services of Morris Vice President of Senior Services Cami Peterson-DeVries. 

Some of the blame has been placed on recent mandates, with changes such as increasing holidays to 11 per year and changing the minimum wage to $19 an hour in 2026 for all nursing home workers. 

We believe strongly– actually, as a representative for senior services, we believe both of those things would be great. But then it does cause us to look at how they can be funded,” said Peterson-DeVries. “We love those kind of things to be able to be implemented. It’s just when funding is required, it’s pretty tough. It doesn’t really set us up for that.”

On Thursday, Duluth Health Services and LeadingAge Minnesota held a candidate forum at ViewCrest Health Center to discuss these issues. 

Natalie Zeleznikar, Mark Munger, Shawn Savela, and Mark McGrew all answered questions such as how senior services would fit into their legislative priorities. 

Natalie Zeleznikar, a Republican currently running for re-election in District 3-B, spoke about her background in healthcare. 

“Health care is in a redefining mode to try to get back to a new normal, to build a workforce that reflects and honors the caregivers and that assures that we have staffing. Because the reality is, caregiving requires caregivers. Without staff, there’s no care,” said Zeleznikar.

Mark Munger is running against Zeleznikar for the 3-B seat and spoke about his mother being in senior care.

“I’ve always taken the view that our society, particularly the state we now are in and are running for office in, has such a great job with the beginning part of our lives in terms of child care and making it affordable,” said Munger. “We’re also providing lunches to kids in school, which is a heck of a good start. Obviously all of this costs money, right? So then when you look to the other end of the spectrum, elder care, I agree that we need to do better.”

Andrea Hanek is part of the SEIU healthcare union and attended the forum to hear candidates’ perspectives about long-term care, home care, healthcare, and senior care. Hanek was taken aback by the claim that mandates by the Nursing Homework for Standards Board are unfunded. 

“It is a mandate, and it is funded. So if they aren’t willing to do it, or they’re not willing to– if they’re going to not be clear on what they’re putting money towards, things like that, then it won’t– I mean, I don’t know how to say it other than the union way. If they’re going to screw around with it, they’re not going to be clear if they’re going to want the money,” said Hanek. “They got the $300 million last time, where that didn’t go towards the workers. 

While all four candidates expressed the desire to mitigate the senior staffing issues, many of the answers were geared towards placing blame on the opposite party. 

“They need to talk about what’s really going on in nursing homes and how we can actually help. And maybe there’s not really good solutions right now. Maybe that’s just where we’re at and being really honest about it. But when the candidates were asked– and I’m going to say all of them even. But when they were asked, what are you going to do, it went to the, oh, there was a lot of the, this was wrong, and this was wrong,” expressed Hanek.