NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with The Seattle Times‘ project Homeless Editor Molly Harbarger about the challenges in treating and housing a rapidly aging homeless population.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The country’s homeless population is aging. In the 1990s, the average age of someone living on the street was around 30. Today it’s 50. That brings new challenges. And to talk us through some of them, Molly Harbarger is with us from Seattle. She’s the editor of Project Homeless with The Seattle Times. Good to have you here.
MOLLY HARBARGER: Of course. Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: Why is the homeless population aging so quickly?
HARBARGER: So it’s a combination of two things. One is that we have a growing homeless population, which means that there are more people who are aging while living on the street. But we also have a lot more of an influx of older people who are becoming homeless later in life.
SHAPIRO: Is there a particular reason somebody might become homeless later in life now, whereas they would have been less likely to a few decades ago? Is it about the social safety net, the cost of living, all of that?
HARBARGER: It’s all of that. Yeah, we have a confluence of things. Over 30% of baby boomers are retiring with no retirement savings. We’ve also lived through a couple recessions at this point, and every time we have one of these rises in cost of living, that ripples on for a lot longer. And so our Social Security payments have not kept pace with all of that upheaval. It hasn’t kept pace with inflation. And so as more people retire with less savings, they are more dependent on those Social Security payments that often don’t pay rent in a lot of major cities anymore.
SHAPIRO: Older people have more frequent medical incidents, regardless of their living circumstances. How does homelessness exacerbate those conditions?
HARBARGER: Your immune system tends to reflect about 20 to 30 years older. Even if you’re in a shelter,…
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