Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

moneywise.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#21

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

jongjong wrote: post #16

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

I wouldn’t attribute this to immigration. Generally (eta: in my understanding in the usa where this study also is) immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do. I otherwise agree the homeowning NIMBY class who want to retain neighborhood character or whatever suck, because as a consequence they are restricting housing. I also want to point the finger at corporations that buy up housing as an investment; there’s no reason any Corp should be buying up residential family housing and bleeding people dry through rents.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#23

Post by m000 »

0dayz wrote: post #5

That's very surprising, given that you typically hear about how it's the baby boomers who reaped the rewards and screwed over everyone else.

And they want to screw everyone else again.

"We have the means to end homelessness in older adults. By increasing affordable housing for older adults, engaging in targeted prevention efforts, and building off the success of permanent supportive housing, we can make homelessness for older adults rare and brief."

Why are homeless baby boomers any more of a problem than entire generations that have been condemned to perpetual renting? Generations that never had access to affordable housing (like boomers had) are much more likely to end up homeless as they grow old. Yet, here we are discussing how to save those poor boomers instead of addressing the systemic inefficiencies their generation created.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#24

Post by qznc »

myshpa wrote: post #11
jamesmurdza wrote: post #2

"In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%." When I read something like this I have to ask—Where is the data for the past 20 years?

The quote you've posted is missing current numbers. We're now at 50%. "In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%. Now, the over-50 demographic represents half of the homeless single adults in the U.S. — with no sign of their numbers slowing, leaving baby…

This metric is weird. Is it somehow better if “young” adults were homeless?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#25

Post by epistasis »

jongjong wrote: post #16

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

It's not only the regulations, but that regulations put Boomers in control of allowing housing locally.

The combination of a generation that pulls up the ladder as soon as they have something, plus a government that caters to local homeowners has created a catastrophe for all but the wealthiest. Housing austerity benefits the wealthy (by which I include all homeowners) by extracting economic rent from everyone less wealthy.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#27

Post by Scarblac »

myshpa wrote: post #11
jamesmurdza wrote: post #2

"In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%." When I read something like this I have to ask—Where is the data for the past 20 years?

The quote you've posted is missing current numbers. We're now at 50%. "In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%. Now, the over-50 demographic represents half of the homeless single adults in the U.S. — with no sign of their numbers slowing, leaving baby…

What percentage of adults in the US are over 50?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#28

Post by koolba »

0dayz wrote: post #5

That's very surprising, given that you typically hear about how it's the baby boomers who reaped the rewards and screwed over everyone else.

Reminds me of these parasitic worms that resort to cannibalism when times get tough: https://www.science.org/content/article/stress-turns-tiny-wo...

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#29

Post by ejb999 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #21
jongjong wrote: post #16

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

I wouldn’t attribute this to immigration. Generally (eta: in my understanding in the usa where this study also is) immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do. I otherwise agree the homeowning NIMBY class who want to retain neighborhood character or whatever suck, because as a consequence they are restricting housing. I also want to point the finger at corpo…

Just keep telling yourself that... NYC would strongly disagree.

When you let 5-10 million +/- people into the country in a short amount of time - where are they supposed to live? Of course it drives up homelessness and home prices - use your common sense.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#30

Post by peoplefromibiza »

wtcactus wrote: post #12

"In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%." Society has been built for couples. With the major societal changes in the last 2 decades, we had an explosion of single people wanting to live alone, and the infrastructure is simply not prepared for it. My pa…

> because they were two working for a common goal.

Same here, in a different Country, in a different Continent, on the other side of the Ocean.

As you correctly point out, society was built for couples, not necessarily to build families, but sure enough not to live alone, or to use the modern periphrasis "as a single".

The entire rhetoric "ok boomer" is missing the point entirely, boomers were obviously the first generation in human history to benefit from an age of relative peace that lasted 70 years, but they were all "working for a common goal" and building society anew from the ashes that WWII left everywhere.

It's hard to admit for my generation that we performed a lot worse than our parents in terms of political participation, rights movements and class struggle to extract from capital the necessary means to have a fulfilling life, we were enchanted by the song of the sirens, but unlike Ulysses, we did not tie ourselves to the mast and fell for it.

I know my generation failed in a lot of ways, but my generation also had children that are a lot dumber than we were, through no fault of their own, but because they were not given the means to understand their past and the will to work hard, because for a parent saying "yes" is always easier than saying "no", so they probably won't be able to prevent the mistakes previous generations made, while also making completely new mistakes, that previous generations could not anticipate.

One simple example: if you ask who invented the electric car most probably they will say Elon Musk at Tesla, while Elon Musk had no role in it and electric car predates ICE cars by 50 years.

Post reply on HN