The aging of America means more old people on fixed incomes are overwhelmed by the high cost of housing and other financial shocks; ‘not seen since the Great Depression’
NAPLES, Fla.—Judy Schroeder was living a stable retirement in this affluent Florida enclave. Then her apartment building was sold to a new owner during the pandemic and she lost her part-time job working at a family-owned liquor store.
What followed was a swift descent into homelessness.
Faced with a rent increase of more than $500 a month, Schroeder, who had little savings and was living month-to-month on Social Security, moved out and started couch surfing with friends and acquaintances. She called hundreds of other landlords in Naples and southwest Florida but failed to find anything more affordable. She applied for a low-income housing voucher. She began eyeing her 2004 Pontiac Grand Am as a last resort shelter.
“I never thought, at 71 years old, that I would be in this position,” she said.
Baby boomers, who transformed society in so many ways, are now having a dramatic effect on homelessness. Higher numbers of elderly living on the street or in shelters add complications and expenses for hospitals and other crisis services. The humanitarian problem is becoming a public-policy crisis, paid for by taxpayers.
Aged people across the U.S. are homeless in growing numbers in part because the supersize baby boomer generation, which since the 1980s has contributed large numbers to the homeless population, is now old. But other factors have made elderly people increasingly vulnerable to homelessness, and the vast numbers of boomers are feeding the surge.
The second half of the baby boomers, now mostly in their 60s, unlike the older members of their generation, came of age during back-to-back economic downturns, permanently setting them behind in wealth, according to some academic researchers. Many of them worked jobs that had stopped offering pensions. Those “trailing edge” boomers who are financially less secure are now mostly moving into retirement.
“The fact that we are seeing elderly homelessness is something that we have not seen since the Great Depression,” said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania social policy professor and researcher with expertise in homelessness and housing issues.
Officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development say older adults are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population and are making up a larger and larger share of homeless people overall.
HUD will for the first time break down how many homeless people are 65 and older across the country in its annual tally of the national homeless population released around the end of the year.
In previous data from HUD, which isn’t as extensive, people 51 and older were 16.5% of people in shelters in 2007 and 23% in 2017—a rise steeper than that of the overall senior population during that time. The federal government changed the way it tracks data around that year, but the increase has continued. People 55 and older were 16.3% of the sheltered homeless population in 2018 and 19.8% in 2021, federal data show.
Metropolitan areas including Miami, Denver and Columbus, Ohio, have recorded steep increases in homelessness among older people, illustrating what many experts say is a mounting “silver tsunami.”
The aging population has strained shelters ill-equipped to accommodate wheelchairs or people unable to climb onto top bunks, according to shelter staff. Culhane and other researchers estimated in one study that healthcare and shelter costs in New York City would roughly triple by 2030 compared with 2011, and in Los Angeles would go up 67%, as the older homeless population, who are generally in poorer health, visit emergency rooms, are hospitalized or stay in nursing homes………