Tents under I-83 North Bridge in Baltimore City for people experiencing homelessness. File photo by Elizabeth Shwe.
Mission Possible founder James Roberts has noticed it, an increase in residents in their 60s and 70s seeking emergency housing at his homeless shelter in Baltimore.
“It’s kind of been that way for a few years now,” said Roberts, 78. “We do what we can to help them and to get them taken care of.”
State housing officials say that what Roberts is seeing is part of a statewide trend.
From 2018 to 2024, there was a 77% increase in adults aged 65 and older facing homelessness, according to new data reported by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. The numbers rose in that period from 677 to 1,199 people, a “concerning trend” according to Danielle Meister, assistant secretary of homeless solutions within the department.
“On it’s own, 77% is a large increase, but it is above and beyond any increases we’re seeing for other populations,” Meister said earlier this week. “So, it’s telling us that there’s a specific issue related to older adults that causing this disparity and this greater level of need.”
Older homeless people still make up just a portion of the overall homeless population in the state. But the rise in the older homeless population comes as the state’s homeless population overall has gone down, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual point-in-time survey, from 8,390 sheltered and unsheltered individuals in 2015 to 5,865 individuals in 2023, the most-recent year for which the survey is available.
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While federal data is not yet available for 2024, Maryland officials gathered preliminary homelessness numbers from local Continuum of Care entities, which coordinate health and housing services to across different regions in the state.
This is the first year state officials have requested data for those aged 55 and older and 65 and older. Meister first presented the data to a handful of lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Ending Homelessness in late October.
“We’ve had data for all other populations,” Meister said, which includes information on homeless youth, LGBTQ+ people, and families, among other demographics. “But this year, for the first time, we have this older adult homelessness data.”
It showed that much of the increase in homelessness occurred in post-pandemic years. From 2022 to 2024, there was a 49% increase in people aged 65 and older. Meister said that the situation is not at crisis-levels yet, but is something that housing officials and other agencies should be “keeping a pulse on.”
“It is also indicative that the current system of housing and services isn’t serving this population as well as it could be, and that we need to develop new ides and new ways of serving people,” she said.
There are a couple of primary factors leading to more older people to experience homelessness, one of which the so-called “silver tsunami” — the simple fact that the number of older folks is rising both nationally and in the state.
“The country’s getting older,” Meister said. “At a demographic level, the population of America is getting older, and especially in Maryland. By 2030, we’re expecting people over 60 to make up about 26% of the population. Right now that’s between 20%-23%.”
Isabella Shycoff, who oversees the housing division within the Department of Aging, agreed.
“The numbers that are being collected by the housing department, while they are alarming, they are also trending along the lines of our aging demographic in general,” Shycoff said. “That is, Marylanders are getting older, so the numbers of homelessness, the age groups that are represented in it are also getting older.”
But the rising costs of living is also a factor, Shycoff said, which can be additionally challenging for people aged 65 and older because they can be on restricted incomes.
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“Rents have gone up, and our demographic are often people on fixed incomes. So if the rent goes up, they have … few options available to them to afford that,” Shycoff said.
Older individuals on a fixed income can also have a harder time bouncing back from financial difficulties.
“We find that older people usually find themselves in a crisis for two main reasons – a medical crisis … or a financial crisis – and then those things turn into tipping points where they lose their housing,” Shycoff said.
Meister said that older homeless people can qualify for many of the housing services and resources currently available to help their situation, but that people aged 65 and older may need additional resources.
“A lot of the assistance that we have is time limited. It’s generally for households who, within a year or two, could pay fair market rent on their own – they have earning potential,” Meister said. “For people aged 65 and older, we don’t want to necessarily assume the right solution for them is getting back to the workforce, because they are at that retirement age.”
“We already know that 29% of those adults have a disability, so they may be out of the workforce entirely and living off of disability income or Social Security income, retirement,” Meister said. “Those resources … remaining the same year over year, or with modest increases, it’s just not keeping up with the pace of housing costs and living costs.
“So when we think about interventions … what they really need and are looking for is a long-term income subsidy or rental subsidy that can help them pay the rent and live independently and not have to come into the homeless system,” Meister said. “And those long-term programs like vouchers are just really limited resources.”
She said that addressing the older population of homeless individuals is going to be a major focus for the department in the next year, and officials are discussing a few options to help older homeless people.
Increasing housing subsidy opportunities for older people facing a financial crisis is one of the options on the table, to help before someone loses their housing, she said.
Meister’s department is also considering co-housing programs that pair older adults with others to share housing costs.
In addition, she said that they’re hoping to increase the number of shelters that can meet the specialized needs of older people, specifically those who need additional help with daily activities such as personal care or for those who need medical respite care.
“Those are some creative options that we would love to see expanded in our state,” Meister said.