Nancie Carlson got a notice to vacate her apartment in Klamath Falls, where she lived for the past 10 years, in December. When she found out, she was shocked. She didn’t sleep that night.
“I laid awake thinking, ‘Oh, God, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?’ You know, you have to mull over,” Carlson said. “I just ... I tried to talk through it.”
Carlson, 84, had 90 days to find a place to live, and days later, she tested positive for COVID-19. The diagnosis delayed her start on the moving process when the clock was already ticking. In an attempt to buy herself some time before an apartment search certain to drag on, she wrote to the property manager asking for a longer timeline for moving. She was told ‘no.’
“There was really a lack of, I don’t know, empathy that I might have been too optimistic to expect,” Carlson explained. “It was basically just cut and dried. You know, ‘sorry, you’re out.’”
Carlson is retired and lives on a fixed income. She paid $600 a month for her one-bedroom, which was a rare and affordable deal. Her former landlords, she said, often rented to people on fixed incomes like herself. Now, her entire apartment complex is being vacated.
The property was sold in December, and shortly thereafter, the new owners began issuing notices to vacate. After some renovations, Carlson says, the apartments will be relisted at higher prices.
Klamath Falls-based All Seasons Property Management, which managed Carlson’s apartment and ordered her to vacate, declined to comment.
When Carlson started looking for a new place, options nearby were scarce.
“Rentals are almost impossible to find in Klamath Falls, and for every rental, there’s 30 applicants, and so trying to relocate within Klamath Falls would be a problem,” Carlson said.
After searching for a while and weighing the limited options she faces on a fixed income, Carlson arranged to move all the way to Los Angeles where she will live with her granddaughter, an outcome she had never expected.
Moving at age 84 is exhausting.
“It’s been very, very difficult for me — not mentally, but physically,” Carlson said. “So that’s been really, really hard. I used to be able to get a second wind, in the afternoon, and then I could go again for another few hours, but that second wind doesn’t come anymore.”
Cause for concern
Carlson is one of many aging adults facing the stressful reality of housing instability. In February, U.S. Census estimates found 36.8% of the population in Oregon said they were behind on their rent or mortgage and were likely to face losing their home to eviction or foreclosure within the next two months. Census estimates also show among aging adults, this number is even higher: Nearly 40% of all Oregonians age 65 and older reported they were at least somewhat likely to face eviction or foreclosure.
Housing authorities and advocates predict a huge increase in the number of aging adults who can’t afford housing and are on a trajectory to end up homeless, displaced or facing unstable housing. Alison McIntosh, policy and communications director at Neighborhood Partnerships, said there has been a rise in the need for services among aging populations.
“All across Oregon, we are seeing people struggle to afford their rent,” McIntosh said. “The cost of rent is going up much faster than either wages or Social Security, or retirement benefits; and I think particularly for folks on fixed incomes, it has become increasingly unsustainable.”
Simple math
Even after a 5.9% bump in January, SSI income for an individual maxes out at $841 a month. The federal measure of livability that finds rent should absorb no more than 30% of a person’s income. By that standard, a person whose sole source of income is SSI can afford to spend roughly $252 on monthly rent.
In more expensive parts of Oregon, including Multnomah, Clackamas and Columbia counties, average rent for a studio is $1,245. But even the most inexpensive rate for a studio — $484 in Harney County — is still outside what is considered viable for those relying solely on SSI for income.
“It’s not unusual for me to talk to folks who live in regulated affordable housing and hear that they are paying 50, 60, 70% of their income towards their rent, which leaves too little money left over for other things,” McIntosh said. “They struggle to buy food or medicine, pay their utility bill, let alone, you know, buy their grandchildren a birthday present.”
As is usually the case with vulnerable populations, aging populations are at an intersection of myriad economic vulnerabilities, and they compound. Aging populations often face employment issues, medical problems and health care gaps. Throwing in an inability to afford rent exacerbates these problems.
Erin Grahek, community services manager at Multnomah County Aging, Disability and Veterans Services division, said the result is that people are often choosing between rent and other bills or essentials like food and medicine.
“That whole thing about, like looking at all of your different bills and expenses, and picking which one I’m going to pay this month, right? Or, you know, do I pay rent?” Grahek said. “We see a number of folks, for example, who just delay and let the utility costs pile up, knowing that they can come to us one time in a year. So they’ll let things pile up for the year, and then they’ll come requesting assistance to pay those utilities.”
When this fragile balancing of debt and bills becomes untenable, people become homeless.
“I think probably most of them are,” McIntosh said. “I mean, they could be moving in with family members, they could be doubling up, they could be living in their car. But I would expect that a bunch of them are experiencing homelessness.”
The conditions positioning aging populations in Oregon to lose their homes are common across the country. A 2019 study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and partner researchers dubbed the issue an “Emerging Crisis of Aged Homelessness,” and found the aging homeless population is already growing “rapidly” and is expected to do so for the next decade.
Providing more money to keep people in their homes is the best strategy to avoid homelessness, according to housing advocates and those in social services.
Marisa Espinoza, policy advocate for Northwest Pilot Project, said the impending crisis was visible on the horizon for years.
“There were projections a few years ago that ... by 2030, the population of older adults experiencing homelessness would triple,” Espinoza said. “It really has to do with long term disinvestment in our safety net — the lack of retirement supports that people tend to have at this point when they are exiting the workforce, the fact that so many people are in sectors of employment that really end up factoring into long term chronic health conditions and other conditions that might even force them to exit the workforce early.”
While state and federal lawmakers have piped funds to affordable housing and rental assistance, the need outweighs the resources. For instance, McIntosh points out, the state housing assistance program, in which the recipient pays 30% of rental costs and the government pays the rest, is a lottery, not an entitlement like SNAP or Medicaid, which are offered to anyone who qualifies. The result is roughly one in four who are eligible for housing assistance actually gets help.
“Does it make me anxious? Absolutely,” Grahek said. “There are growing numbers, which tells me that that’s problematic. And I don’t see anything overall that smacks of an imminent solution.”
While policies deciding the size of the social safety net are a pivotal determiner of the outcomes for aging populations, the housing system at large has set the stage for the looming crisis.
“We’ve created this system where folks are paying way too much of their income towards housing costs, or they struggle to maintain housing, or they don’t have housing at all,” McIntosh said.
Decades of gentrification, housing instability and intractable poverty brought about programs like Section 8, affordable housing development programs, and various subsidies. But these haven’t been enough to stem the tide.
In this sense, Espinoza said, the housing system doesn’t protect tenants. While there are real burdens landlords face, there still aren’t enough protections for the very poor.
“One of the things that’s so important is that we prioritize tenants in general,” Espinoza said. “I think there’s just been such a huge outcry from landlords and, you know, housing providers in some of these spaces. And I understand that ... especially when it comes to smaller landlords, there are real burdens that they may be carrying when a tenant is unable to pay their rent. I think our systems need to reflect an affirmative effort to help folks who are much more likely to face complete financial devastation. When you’re a tenant, there is no cushion at all.”
The housing crisis preceded the pandemic, but the pandemic has triggered protections that are vital, Espinoza said.
“We’ve had so many (legislative) initiatives that say, ‘yeah, tenants need this help, and we’re prioritizing them,’” Espinoza said. “I think for this to not be a massive wave of evictions, we need to continue that trajectory that’s really critical here.”
The federal government passed a $1.5 trillion omnibus bill on March 11, allocating $53.7 billion for housing stability — including $27.4 billion for tenant-based rental assistance and $200 million in housing assistance funds. In Oregon, the 2022 legislative session passed a $400 million funding package to shore up housing stability and combat a worsening homelessness crisis.
New funds promise to pull some back from the brink, though how many remains to be seen.
“I think what we know is that there are lots and lots of folks who are just barely hanging on right now,” Espinoza said. “And some of what is keeping them afloat is our already limited pool of rent assistance, or already limited set of protections for tenants. And so the minute that those go away, we are likely facing a pretty big flood of more folks losing their housing.”