Old and on the Street: The Graying of America’s Homeless

The homeless population in the US is aging, jumping 20% since 2007, representing 31% of the country's homeless population and causing problems for local government. 307,000 Americans over 50 lived on the streets when data was taken in 2014, many having been homeless for at least a generation following drug epidemics and economic depressions. The problem is increasing in large cities, particularly across Southern California where encampments are dotted around the outskirts and freeways of major cities. The life expectancy of a homeless person is just 64 years, 14 years less than the national average, and homeless seniors are suffering from issues more commonly experienced far later in life, according to  Anne Miskey, executive director of the Downtown Women’s Center: “We are dealing with the same issues with a 50-year-old that a housed person would have in their 70s, in terms of physical and mental health.” 

“You see things you wouldn’t believe,” Ms. Welker said. “Someone could be getting killed, someone could be getting knifed. And life goes on. Charities are still handing out coffee and soup.”

There were 235,000 homeless Americans between 18 and 30 in 2014, making up 24 percent of the nation’s homeless population. That was up from 226,000 in 2007, when the age group made up 20 percent of the total homeless population, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Some of them can be seen on Skid Row. But here in Los Angeles, these younger homeless people have staked out their own spaces to live — on the beaches of Venice, on the garbage-scattered scraps of dirt by the Hollywood Freeway.

Some were bustling on a recent morning through the cramped hallways of My Friend’s Place, a two-story ramshackle storefront right up against the edge of the freeway, its entrance hidden off an alley. It is a former recording studio that was turned 18 years ago into a center for homeless youth; nearly 1,500 people between the ages of 18 to 24 came here last year.

That morning, they were a blur of people in T-shirts, tattered jeans and sweatshirts, stopping by for a shower, a meal, job training — including circus schooling on the ropes and hoops in the Cirque du Monde room — or an undisturbed nap on an overstuffed chair in the main room. The center shuts its door at night.

“We are getting sandwiched by real old folks and real young folks,” said Heather Carmichael, the executive director of My Friend’s Place. “It’s horrific.”