Rural Wisconsin seniors are turning concern into action, and bringing their neighbors with them

In rural Wisconsin, seniors are proving that retirement is not a retreat from public life — it is a return to it. Across the state, older residents are organizing to defend publicly owned nursing homes, expand healthcare and caregiving, and strengthen the small towns they have spent a lifetime calling home– or have chosen to live out their retirement years enjoying. 

Roughly one in five Wisconsinites is 65 or older, and nearly a quarter of older adults live in rural communities, where access to healthcare, transportation, affordable housing, and caregiving is increasingly strained. Many rural counties face physician shortages, community owned nursing homes being sold off to private buyers, and an aging population that depends on services often threatened by budget cuts. 

Seniors living in these areas not only want and need support, but they also want the opportunity to have a good quality of life, which means they need access to affordable housing and transportation, but also to each other. To fight the social isolation that plagues many seniors, they would like senior and intergenerational centers and programs, where they can share their interests and help positively influence young people.

One of the most visible fights in rural Wisconsin has centered on county-owned nursing homes. Wisconsin has 36 publicly owned nursing homes — more than any state except Indiana — but over the past three decades, 22 counties have sold or closed theirs. 

In Lincoln County, Eileen Guthrie was one of many local residents who organized to stop the sale of their county-owned nursing home that has cared for local families for generations. Grassroots volunteers packed county board meetings, scrutinized financial records, held town halls, and built the People for Pine Crest campaign. Although the county ultimately voted to sell the facility, the organizing did not end there. Instead, these Lincoln County seniors connected with seniors in Sauk, Portage, and several other counties who were engaged in similar fights.

“It’s a philosophy,” Eileen explained of why there is a push to sell the nursing homes and to, more generally, cut services for working class seniors. “Instead of believing the most important thing is to care for people, they believe it’s to make money.

The movement the seniors are building is about far more than nursing homes. For example, in Walworth County, seniors and their family members organized a campaign to get their local government to expand transportation services to include Sundays, allowing local residents who no longer drive to get to church and social engagements. Across Wisconsin, seniors are holding community breakfasts, leadership summits, and local meetings to identify problems and build practical solutions together.

Now, they are in the midst of organizing a non-partisan candidate town hall at the end of the month in Baraboo. They have invited all the gubernatorial candidates and are busy preparing the questions they want to ask.

Their work is rooted in memory as much as necessity. Many remember when public institutions were better funded, county nursing homes were viewed as community assets, and rural towns invested more deeply in schools, healthcare, and local services. Rather than dwelling on the past, they use those experiences to argue that today’s challenges are the result of political choices—not inevitabilities — and now they plan to ask the candidates about them. 

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Small Town & Rural Seniors (STARS) is a group of seniors from all walks of life, working toward a better future for older adults in Wisconsin.

Join them on Saturday, July 25 from 1 PM to 3 PM at the Ho-Chunk Convention Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where they will be asking candidates for Wisconsin governor directly about the issues that matter most to small-town and rural seniors.

Five candidates have confirmed they’ll be in attendance:

• Kelda Roys, State Senator (D – Madison)
• Francesca Hong, State Representative (D – Madison)
• Joel Brennan, former Secretary of Administration (D – Milwaukee)
• Andrew Manske (R – Greenfield)
• Sara Rodriguez, Lieutenant Governor (D – Waukesha)

If you live in Walworth County, Lincoln County, Marathon County or Portage County, tell them you’d like a ride when you register! Reservations will be on a first come first served basis. Parking at pick-up sites will be available. You can submit your request for transportation here.

RSVP to the event here.

For more information, please visit: stars-wi.org/