The 55-year-old planned to use the $ 800-a-month disability check to get an apartment after back surgery. But she soon fell asleep in her old pickup sheltered by the German Shepherd Scrappy, unable to afford housing in Phoenix, where average monthly rents rose 33% during the coronavirus pandem to over $ 1,220 for a one-bedroom room. , according to ApartmentList.com. Finocchio is the face of America’s gray homeless population, a rapidly growing group of needy and desperate people aged 50 and over who are suddenly homeless after losing their job, divorce, family death or health crisis during a pandemic. “We’re seeing a huge explosion in homeless seniors,” said Kendra Hendry, a affairs officer at Arizona’s largest shelter, where seniors make up about 30 percent of those living there. “They are not necessarily people with mental illness or substance abuse problems. “They are people being pushed to the streets due to the increase in rents.” Academics predict that number will nearly triple over the next decade, prompting policymakers from Los Angeles to New York to come up with new ideas to protect the latter from baby boomers as they grow older, get sick and become less able to pay. and rising rents. Advocates say much more housing is needed, especially for extremely low-income people. Wheelchairs and walkers on the sidewalks, the elderly homeless have medical ages older than their years, with mobility, cognition and chronic problems such as diabetes. Many were infected with COVID-19 or could not work due to pandemic restrictions. “It’s so scary,” Finocchio said, her green eyes blurring with tears as she sat on the cushion of her roller coaster. “I do not want to be on the street in a wheelchair and live in a tent.” It was the first time that Finocio was left homeless. It is now located in Ozanam Manor, a transitional shelter managed by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix for people aged 50 and over seeking permanent housing. In the 60-bed shelter, Finocchio sleeps in a college-style dormitory with a single bed and a small desk displaying a photo of Scrappy. The dog with the vivid black ears lives with his brother Finokio. A 67-year-old army veteran, Lovia Primous, had a stroke in his downhill spiral, costing him his job and forcing him to sleep in his Honda Accord. He was referred to the transitional shelter after recovering from COVID-19. “Life was hard,” said Primous, who grew up in a once-isolated African-American neighborhood in southern Phoenix. “I’m just trying to stay positive.” Cardelia Corley took to the streets of Los Angeles County after her telemarketing job was cut short. Now 65, Corley said she was surprised to meet so many others who also worked, including a teacher and a nurse who lost her home due to illness. “I always worked, I was successful, I put my child in college,” said the unmarried mother. “And then suddenly things went down.” Corley traveled by bus all night and boarded trains to catch a cat nap. “And then I would go to Union Station downtown and rinse in the bathroom,” Corley said. He recently moved into a small apartment in East Hollywood with the help of The People Concern, a non-profit Los Angeles organization. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development reported in the 2017 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report that the percentage of homeless people aged 50 and over in emergency shelters or transitional housing increased from 22.9% in 2007 to 33.8% in 2017. More accurate and recent figures at national level are not “. t is available because HUD has since changed its reporting methodology and brings together seniors with all adults over 25 years of age. A 2019 study of homeless people led by the University of Pennsylvania relied on 30-year census data to predict that the US population aged 65 and over experiencing homelessness will almost triple from 40,000 to 106,000 by 2030, resulting in a crisis public health. age-related medical problems are proliferating. Dr Margot Kushel, a doctor who runs the Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, San Francisco, said her research in Auckland on how homelessness affects health found that nearly half of the tens of thousands of seniors Homeless people in the US are on the streets for the first time. “We see that retirement is no longer the golden dream,” Kusel said. “Many poor workers are destined to retire on the streets.” This is especially true for younger baby boomers, now in their late 50s to late 60s, who do not have 401 (k) pensions or accounts. About half of women and men aged 55 to 66 do not have retirement savings, according to the census. Born between 1946 and 1964, the baby boomers now exceed 70 million, the census shows. With the oldest boomers in the mid-1970s, everyone will reach the age of 65 by 2030. Older homeless people also tend to have fewer social security checks after years of working out of books. One-third of the approximately 900 elderly homeless people in Phoenix said in a recent survey that they have no income at all. Teresa Smith, CEO of the San Diego-based nonprofit Dreams for Change, said she has also noticed that the homeless population is aging. The group operates two secure parking spaces for people living in cars. Susan, who lived on a plot of land, only spoke if her last name was not used due to the lack of housing. The 63-year-old suffered from kidney cancer while caring for her mother and then lost their two-bedroom apartment after her mother died. Cancer is now in remission. Susan slept in her car with her dog in one of the enclosed car parks with bathroom, shower and shared fridge and microwave. He was surprised to see a man in his 80s living in a car there, calling it “just wrong”. But the locals enjoyed the community, grilling meals together and even surprising one of their group with a birthday cake. Dreams for Change recently helped Susan acquire a one-bedroom apartment with a housing voucher after months of waiting. With a washer and dryer, patio, dishwasher and bathtub, “I feel like I’m at the Ritz,” he said. Donald White Jr., executive director of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless, said seeing elderly people sleeping in cars and abandoned buildings should be of concern to everyone. “We are now accepting these things for which we would have been outraged just 20 years ago,” Whitehead said. Whitehead said blacks, Latins and Indigenous people who grew up in the 1980s amid a recession and high unemployment were disproportionately represented among the homeless. Many approaching retirement have never found a well-paying job and have not bought a home due to biased real estate practices. “So many of us did not put money into retirement plans, thinking that Social Security was going to take care of us,” said Rudy Soliz, 63, a business director for the Justa Center, which offers meals, showers, mail and more. services for the elderly homeless in Phoenix. The average monthly Social Security retirement in December was $ 1,658. Many older homeless people have much smaller checks because they worked fewer years or earned less than others. People aged 65 and over with limited resources and who have not worked hard enough to earn retirement benefits may be eligible for the $ 841 Supplementary Security Income per month. Finocchio said she made limited contributions to Social Security and Medicare because most of her work was off-the-shelf phone sales or watering office plants. “Programs approved by Congress to prevent poverty among the elderly and people with disabilities do not work,” said Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the 2019 study on the elderly homeless in New York. Boston and Los Angeles County. “And the problem will get worse.” Jennifer Molinsky, project director for the Aging Society Program at Harvard University’s Joint Housing Studies Center, agreed that the federal government should do more to ensure that older Americans are better housed. “The younger booms have been particularly hard hit by the Great Depression, many have lost their homes near retirement,” Molinski said. Long-term shelters, especially for the elderly, help some get off the road, at least temporarily. The Arizona Department of Housing last year provided a $ 7.5 million block grant for the state’s largest shelter to buy an old hotel to temporarily house up to 170 homeless seniors. The city of Phoenix has earned $ 4 million for renovations. Central Arizona Shelter Services CEO Lisa Glow, who manages the state’s largest shelter in downtown Phoenix, said the hotel is expected to open by the end of the year. Residents will stay for about 90 days, while case officials help find permanent housing “We need more dignified, safer and more comfortable places for our seniors,” Glow said, noting that physical limitations make it difficult for seniors to take refuge in the 500-bed city center. Nestor Castro, 67, was luckier than many who lose their homes permanently. Castro was in his 50s and was living in New York when his mother died and was treated for bleeding ulcers, losing their apartment. He first stayed with his sister in Boston, then for more than three years at a YMCA in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shortly before Christmas, Castro acquired a permanent subsidized apartment through Hearth Inc., a Boston nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness among the elderly. Residents pay 30% of their income to stay in one if Hearth’s 228 units. Castro pays part of his social security check and a part-time job. He also works voluntarily in a food warehouse and a non-profit organization that helps people with housing. “Housing is a big problem around here because they are building luxury apartments that no one can afford,” he said.
