The coming homeless die-off

[Paul E Ester]

A national study out of Pennsylvania says the median age of single adult homeless people is now 53 — and that without a big push toward getting older indigents into housing and medical care, huge swaths of them will be dying off in the next decade.

Social scientists say the median age has been steadily increasing for many years, supporting the “big bang” theory that many of today’s street people hit the gutter back in the 1980s era of recession and slashings of social programs.

Life expectancy on the street is about 64, and the new study, led by University of Pennsylvania social policy Professor Dennis Culhane, projects that without special attention, most of that “big bang” group of homeless people will die in the next 15 years.

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/03/27/the-coming-homeless-die-off/

[PDJane]

1. I suspect that's part of the plan.

if they die on the streets, no one has to think about them again.

[kestrel91316]

2. They will just be replaced by MORE unwanted, unemployable 50-somethings.

[SheilaT]

3. "Life expectancy on the street is about 64".

64 years of living on the street? Sounds like a long time to me, since most people don't live on the street their entire lives. I'm being slightly sarcastic here, since I can figure out what that awkward wording actually means. But more to the point, I think, just how long does a typical street person survive living like that? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty?

I help out at a local homeless shelter, and it's horrifying how old most of the people look. A lot of the aging comes from cigarettes and alcohol, which will make even a rich person look old. But the struggle of surviving on the street is unimaginable to me.

[Cleita]

5. Look at it this way. They turn to the cigarettes, alcohol and drugs because of despair.

It might even help them live longer in a weird way by numbing the pain.

[Blanks]

14. Probably not smoking. eom

[Cleita]

15. No, not the smoking, but with the price of cigs today, they probably

don't smoke that many.

[Fumesucker]

18. Finding butts to smoke isn't as easy as it used to be but it's still not that difficult

I smoke old stogies I have found, short but not too big around

King of the Road

[SheilaT]

16. It's probably true that they turn

to those things because of despair. I sincerely doubt it helps any of them live longer.

And when you add lack of health care to those other things, I'm surprised that the average street person can possibly survive to age 64, unless perhaps they became homeless only a few years earlier. I suspect that many of those on the street, if they can't get off, simply die at a relatively young age.

[Cleita]

4. Not a single person needs to be on the streets, who doesn't want to be, not a single one.

We accomplished this after the Great Depression. We can do it again. I never knew a homeless person before 1980. I knew hippies and road travelers or hobos and other societal drops out, but not a single one had to sleep on the street if they didn't want to. When they had tired of dropping out of society, they could drop back in. All that changed in 1980. I believe that is when we became no better than a banana republic or third world nation. We are still one of the richest countries in the world. We don't have to have this disgrace on us.

[HereSince1628]

6. Would a mentally ill person be an 'other societal drop out'?

Because I started seeing them in the 1960's when the state hospital in my home town pretty much eliminated in-patient care and went to 'community based care'.

[Cleita]

7. Don't know where you lived, but where I lived the state hospitals took care of the

mentally ill and the VA the old vets who couldn't look after themselves up until 1980. That's when the effects Jarvis amendment ended all the programs that helped the mentally dysfunctional kicked in so they were thrown out into the street and in a matter of months the VA closed it's old soldiers' homes. Also, there was plenty of work before then and minimum wage was enough to pay rent so you didn't have the working homeless. All that changed when Reagan became President. However, he had done a lot of damage before as Governor of California and it was about then that the effects of the Jarvis Amendment of which he was a part of started to be felt. It was the effects of the Jarvis amendment that also caused a real estate boom for the wealthy of course and made housing way too expensive for minimum wage workers. The Jarvis amendment had a domino effect and state after state adopted versions of it so that's why you see the nationwide homelessness and poverty you see today.

[HereSince1628]

11. The movement to community based care actually gained steam shortly after WWII.

My home town had a very old, but architecturally classic, moral-treatment mental hospital built in the late 1800's. By the mid 1960's it was woefully archaic.

on edit...forgot to say that the move to community care a that facility began with the closing of the hospital's farm and three wards of patients that served it.

[L0oniX]

17. I doubt you have ever known a cronically homeless person.

I've worked the homeless food lines. I have homeless friends. One guy has become a special friend who I go out of my way to see. I hear and see the reasons why people remain homeless. 20% are vets with PTSD, some are drug addicts, some have criminal records, some lost their jobs and home, some show up with children, some are way over 65. There's a wide variety of reasons for their homelessness and most those reasons are extremely hard to over come and return to what some call normal living. To say it is a simple matter to regain a home and job would only reveal the ignorance some people have about being homeless. It ain't the 60's anymore.

[Cleita]

19. That's because it's become institutionalized and many of those who are mentally ill

are for all respects lost and I know it will be hard for them to become socialized again. (I really don't like that word socialized, but can't think of a better one right now.) I have known homeless people. I knew them before they were homeless, before 1980 and they were able to hang in there economically marginally, but hang in there. The Jarvis amendment changed all and I watched them one by one fall through the cracks in the safety nets and end up in the streets. Many are dead now.

What I suggest is giving them a key to a living space, access to food to eat, access to medical care if they want it and some money in their pockets with no strings attached. I mean the whole arrangement has to have no strings attached and I think you will find that many will be willing to give it a try. But you are right. Many can't be saved.

[Aristus]

8. 3 or 4 of my homeless patients are in their 70's.

One of them has been a heroin addict since he was in his 20's. I have a feeling that the only way he is going to die is if someone hands him some Kryptonite.

Every time I visit with him, I ask him if he is ready to quit, so we can get him some treatment. Every time, he says: 'No'.

He's a sweet guy. I wish he'd take care of himself...

[datasuspect]

9. guys like that fascinate me

impervious 40+ year hard drug users and drunks.

kinda goes against the whole recovery narrative in minor ways, but i've always wondered how someone could live as a life long heroin/opiate user like william burroughs AND live to a ripe old age.


weird.

[Aristus]

10. He seems like a burned-out husk of a man.

The husk must be very, very tough...

[datasuspect]

12. they don't make tough like that anymore

he's probably one of the last of the mohicans.

jesus, most people nowadays can't function if they don't have internet connectivity or if they are out of cell range.

amazing.

all those old great depression era folks must be looking down from heaven - they probably laugh at us.

coddled adult infants with a permanent downwards navel gaze.

[Cleita]

13. He's my generation and back in his twenties he would have had what

were called flops then. These were cheap hotel or motel rooms that could be rented for $2 a day. Many addicts back then would do day labor, like work as golf caddies at country clubs for instance, and that would give then enough money for a fix, food and a flop. I knew a lot of guys like this back in my bartending days. He probably survived like this until the nineteen eighties as these flops became remodeled and gentrified and slowly disappeared from the landscape and that reduced him to using shelters. But today the shelters are overwhelmed and can't take care of the needs of these people because so many of them are out in the streets and so many are families with children that the shelters tend to give them preference.

He's never going to take care of himself because society isn't going to give him the means to. A guy like that needs a hotel room and some money for his needs so he can die at least in some modicum of comfort and shelter instead of out in the elements and at the mercy of other homeless who may be crazy and dangerous. If he has a place to go for a meal and a place to go home to at night, he might try to turn around, but he's not going to under the circumstances he's forced to live in. I don't know where you know this guy from but if it's in the LA area, I might have known him back in those days.