At 61, Linda Fett arrived at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row earlier this year without any savings. After her divorce in 1992, the long-term caregiver used what little money she had to pay bills, including car payments and other expenses, in order to live independently.
Fett now receives about $220 a month from the county’s general relief program, with $150 going into the Union Rescue Mission’s Gateway Project, which provides short-term housing for those on the verge of homelessness. That leaves her about $70 a month to pay for basic necessities.
“The biggest hurdle I kept coming across while being a caregiver was that rents were high, even back East,” she said. “I kept driving around to find affordable housing… I didn’t really have much of a savings. I lived on my paycheck.”
Fett is part of a growing population of seniors living in poverty without any retirement savings or a pension and is having to eke out an existence by working past retirement age or scraping to get by on state or federal assistance. She doesn’t have any family members she can reach out to for help.
Adults ages 65 and older are the only age group in the country that saw an uptick in the poverty rate last year, from 9.5% in 2020 to 10.7% in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in programs aimed at helping low-income families and individuals who are not included in the official poverty rate.
In Los Angeles County, about 14,896 adults 55 years and older experienced homelessness in 2020, according to numbers provided by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Homelessness among older adults in the county has gone up by 20% since 2017.
The over-60 population in California is also growing faster than any other age group and is projected to comprise 10.8 million people by 2030, making up one-fourth of the state’s population. To address the anticipated population boom, Gov. Gavin Newsom released the Master Plan for Aging in 2021, outlining five goals to be accomplished over 10 years to help better the health and lives of the elderly and people with disabilities.
Among the chief concerns is finding ways to provide more affordable housing options for seniors, who become homeless mainly because of unemployment, disabling health conditions, evictions and weak social circles, in which older adults don’t have any friends or family members to help them out, according to the agency.
Donna Benton, professor of gerontology at USC and a member of the California’s Master Plan for Aging Stakeholder Advisory Committee, said older adults face a unique set of challenges when they become homeless, because they often have to compete with other high-priority groups in the system, such as those suffering from mental health issues or who have recently come out of incarceration.
Older women of color are especially susceptible to housing insecurity, because they tend to be caregivers for their spouses or other family members, Benton said. These women often leave their jobs, move in with a relative and care for them without having to pay for rent or earn any income she said. But then once the relative passes away, it’s difficult for these women to find new housing or to get back into the job market because of their age.
“It may be the first time, because of their caregiving circumstances, that they lose their housing,” Benton said. “They may be struggling because they don’t understand the new system of care that they have to try…