Seniors are flooding homeless shelters that can't care for them

[douglas9]

PHOENIX — Beatrice Herron, 73, clutched a flier offering low-cost cable TV, imagining herself settling into an apartment, somewhere out of the Arizona heat where, like others her age, she can settle into an armchair and tune into a television of her own.

Instead, the grandmother and former autoworker can be found most mornings in a food line, or seeking shade under the awning of a mobile street clinic. At night, she sleeps on a floor mat at a homeless shelter. She laments the odors of human waste outside and the thieves who have victimized her repeatedly.

“My wallet’s gone,” she said. “My purse was stolen.”

She hardly stands out from the dozens of seniors using wheelchairs and walkers at a complex of homeless shelters near downtown Phoenix, or from the white-haired denizens of tents in the surrounding streets — a testament to a demographic surge that is overwhelming America’s social safety net.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/22/seniors-homeless-baby-boomers/

[moniss]

1. Over the last several years

the big jumps in rent across the country have exacerbated the problem of the lack of affordable senior housing which has been a predictable and avoidable crisis. The demographics have been plain all along that the aging of the Baby Boomers would bring a dramatic increase to strains on health care services etc. and the lack of adequate planning/funding for this has now caused people needless pain and suffering. All so the rich can have their many homes, yachts and jets and high priced private schools for their kids.

[Bluethroughu]

2. I don't ever remember in my lifetime there being so much

Homelessness.

The rich need to pay there fair share to live here. We all have to pay a percentage of our income, but after decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are able to vaccuum money from the rest of us while paying nothing. Trump is a testament to this, with a $750 tax bill. I don't think I ever paid such a small amount, ever.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

5. Pay thier share

Or the gullotine is how I would do it.

[Bluethroughu]

6. Well, history tells us, that's how is goes...unless a few

Rich people are able to get their peers to give into some reforms.

We'll see which way history blows.

[Joinfortmill]

4. So true. It's a scary situation out there right now.

I'm in NH and housing and medical care is extremely scarce. Housing costs, either purchase or rental, are exorbitant. I'm comfortable financially, or I thought I was, until I moved back to my hometown where I still have family.

[Goonch]

3. 👇👇👇👁️👁️

Desi Hurd, 62, uses her wheelchair in The Zone.

[Delphinus]

8. And this scares me

I am going through a divorce and am relying on Social Security - having to find an apartment that doesn't cost more than half my SS is next to impossible.