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The Biggest Challenges Facing Older Americans: Insights from the Aging Advisory Group
Adults aged 50 and older are the fastest-growing age group of those experiencing homelessness, making up nearly half of the single-adult homeless population, which is estimated to triple over the next decade. Older adults are especially vulnerable to becoming homeless, as many live on fixed incomes that are insufficient to cover the cost of housing and other expenses.
Aging Advisory Group
To address the rapid increase of older adults experiencing homelessness, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in partnership with the RRF Foundation for Aging, curated an Aging Advisory Group (AAG). This group represents professionals from various sectors who have knowledge, expertise, and experience in areas related to older adults, their needs, and services to address those needs.
The AAG informed the Alliance’s current policy agenda and legislative strategy through shared insights and recommendations that considered factors impacting older adults, and specifically those at risk of and/or experiencing homelessness.
Between May and June 2024, the Alliance conducted one-on-one interviews via Zoom with each of the eighteen-member Aging Advisory Group. Questions focused on identifying the biggest challenges facing older adults and potential policy solutions.
Challenges Facing Older Adults
The AAG identified the top three challenges facing older adults, along with solutions and strategies to better serve this population:
Housing, which included aspects of affordability, accessibility, and availability, as well as housing that is safe, age-friendly and affirming. Policy solutions to address housing challenges include:
- providing deep, permanent housing subsidies;
- preserving the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s existing housing stock through Section 515 Rural Rental Housing Loans and decoupling rental assistance;
- utilizing incentives to include universal design features in new housing developments; and
- expanding the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program.
Lack of infrastructure spoke to the ability (or lack thereof) of older adults to age in place. These factors included economic stability (housing, food security, healthcare costs); neighborhood and built environment (e.g., transportation and air quality); and social and community context (settings that foster social engagement, leisure, etc.). Social isolation and loneliness are especially important to the mental and physical health and well-being of older adults, and infrastructure plays a key role in helping to facilitate high quality social connections. Solutions that can improve infrastructure for older adults include:
- utilizing No Wrong Door Systems for coordination/integration of services;
- expanding funding for home and community-based federal, especially those delivered through the aging network; and
- scaling services with housing units (e.g., Permanent Supportive Housing or long-term care settings, such as skilled nursing facilities.
Challenges with limited or fixed income often referenced the fact that almost 10 percent of adults aged 65 and older are living below the poverty line, are often paying more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing, and are making hard choices between food, medications, and other basic needs. Solutions to alleviate challenges associated with limited or fixed incomes include:
- bundling Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits with housing vouchers;
- creating Special Purpose Vouchers through HUD for adults aged 55 and older with incomes below 30% Area Median Income; and
- lowering the age for Medicare eligibility.
Generating Best Practices
The input garnered from the Aging Advisory Group is helping to inform the Alliance’s policy priorities and advocacy efforts. Stay tuned for additional information.
It’s clear that the homeless response system and the Aging Network are positioned to partner to address this growing trend in older adult homelessness. Accordingly, the Alliance recently released a new online, self-paced course on older adult homelessness, geared towards staff in the aging and homelessness fields.
Additionally, through a grant from Next50, USAging and the Alliance are in the early stages of generating a set of strategies and best practices focused on the development of effective partnerships between Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) and Continuums of Care (CoCs), to leverage their expertise in addressing older adult homelessness. See this press release for further details.
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