Life got too expensive: Miami seniors are increasingly falling into homelessness

MIAMI — On a recent Thursday evening, Maria Morales pulled her car into a parking lot in downtown Miami. The 75-year-old, along with dozens of others experiencing homelessness, queued for a hot meal provided by a local nonprofit.

Shuffling through the line, Morales filled a deep plastic bowl with sausage and white bean stew. It was her first meal of the day. She carried it carefully in one hand, her cane in the other, as she limped back to her car, an SUV from the late-aughts that has been her home since July.

Like many older homeless people, Morales is new to the experience.

Miami-Dade’s homeless population is getting older at a rapid pace. Across South Florida — and across America — more adults aged 65 and up are finding themselves without housing.

Nationwide, the number of people over 64 accessing homelessness services, such as emergency shelters, increased by 20,000 — a 36% spike — between 2019 and 2022. Older adults are one of the fastest-growing homeless demographics. People 65 and older make up 14% of Miami-Dade’s 3,800-person homeless population, nearly double the 8% represented in 2019. The expectation is that this number could grow to 22% by 2030.

The reasons behind this trend include rising costs, especially in housing, that exceed the fixed incomes of many older individuals. Additional factors include natural disasters, a lack of affordable housing, and long-term economic challenges that have particularly impacted those born between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s.

These issues are particularly severe in Florida, which is becoming increasingly costly and prone to hurricanes, where public camping is now illegal and violators could face arrest.

Florida has the third-oldest population of any American state, slightly younger than Maine and Vermont. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 22% of Florida’s approximately 23 million residents are at least 64.

Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician and homelessness researcher, notes it’s common for older individuals experiencing homelessness to have fallen into it after the age of 50. This demographic is less likely to battle severe substance abuse or mental health issues; instead, they can often identify specific events that led to their homelessness.

For Morales, the turning point was her husband’s death. The couple lived together in a condo in Little Havana until his fatal heart attack in 2006. With her income halved, Morales struggled to pay the mortgage on her home and quickly depleted her savings while accumulating debt. Unable to find work as a former nutritional educator for seniors, she lamented, “I wanted to keep working, but when you’re old, it’s almost impossible to find new work.”

As costs surged during and after the pandemic, Morales could no longer afford her living situation, resulting in her losing her home.

She spent a year moving from friends’ couches to spare bedrooms in search of alternative housing, only to discover that the $967 she receives from Social Security was insufficient for Miami’s rising rental rates. Eventually, she began sleeping in her car, alongside her 10-year-old Chihuahua, Besito, along with her limited possessions. “Life got too expensive,” she remarked.

This narrative aligns with Kushel’s findings, which indicate that reliable research consistently shows homeless rates in communities are affected by the availability of housing for low-income individuals. In Miami-Dade, affordable housing is in short supply, creating severe financial stress among residents.

Six in ten Miamians are considered “cost-burdened,” meaning they spend at least 30% of their monthly income on housing. Additionally, a third of residents are “severely cost-burdened,” spending half their income on housing.

To alleviate the pressures that drive households earning less than $75,000 toward homelessness, the county would need to add at least 90,000 new affordable units, according to estimates.

Roxana Solano, the director of Mia Casa, a senior homeless shelter in North Miami, emphasized that the lack of affordable housing significantly contributes to senior homelessness. Most of Mia Casa’s 120 residents became homeless due to soaring rents. Solano estimated that about two-thirds of her clients lost housing because of rent increases or the death of a spouse, akin to Morales’ experience.

“Many of them couch-surfed from one place to another until there was nowhere left to go,” Solano said. Additionally, as people age, their support network often diminishes as friends and loved ones pass away.

Further compounding the issue, experts like Thomas Byrne from Boston University have observed long-term socioeconomic factors that influence the increase in older homeless individuals. Those born between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s endured economic hardships, including multiple recessions during crucial earning years, resulting in wages that failed to keep pace with rising housing costs.

This demographic, about 13% of Florida’s population, has been prominently represented in homeless counts and faces vulnerabilities that put them at higher risk for homelessness.

Morales’s situation reflects these trends. As she savored her stew, Besito watched her hopefully, illustrating the dire need for attention to the situation of older adults facing homelessness.

“Here,” she said, motioning towards the sprawling line of people waiting for meals, “we’re not all addicts.”