As with society as a whole, the homeless population is naturally aging. But now more people are falling into homelessness for the first time in their later years due to high housing costs.
The elderly homeless are comprised of two main groups. The first include those who have aged into homelessness after already having experienced one or more periods of homelessness. The second are those who enter homelessness for the first time in old age, often due to a life change such as the death of a spouse or parent that they lived with.
And affordable housing doesn’t always stay affordable. “Seniors living in low-income tax credit housing are not protected from steep rent hikes that make this publicly supported housing unaffordable,” says Patti Prunhuber, Justice in Aging's director of housing advocacy. “But states can adopt rent caps that protect older low-income tenants from precipitous rent increases."
