So the older residents of Skid Row make do, and in the process, tax public services. There is the emergency room at Los Angeles County-U.S.C. Medical Center, or the ambulance from Firehouse No. 9 on Skid Row, which brings a crew of medics who are by now well versed on the characters and medical ailments outside the station house. Homeless veterans of all ages receive housing vouchers, and federally subsidized low-income housing projects give preference to the elderly. But few of the older homeless people have worked the time required to qualify for Social Security, much less put aside money for a 401(k) or employee retirement plan. That leaves them to turn to Supplemental Security Income, or S.S.I., a program set up to help poor older people and the disabled that typically pays around $733 a month. But S.S.I. is for people 65 and over, and Social Security does not start until age 62. By then it might be too late. Experts say the average life span for a homeless person living on the street is 64 years. “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,” said Anne Miskey, the executive director of the Downtown Women’s Center, which provides services for 3,000 homeless women a year in Los Angeles. “It is extremely difficult. And women are affected more than men.” Many manage as best they can, living outside and maneuvering around the drug dealing, random stabbings and shootings, and crackdowns by the police. Brenda Gardenshire, 66, who lives in a trim blue tent on a sidewalk she sweeps every morning, said she had learned not to venture out after dark in search of a bathroom, instead using a jar she keeps in her tent.
The homeless population in the US is aging, jumping 31% since 2007, representing 20% 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.”