Causes of Homelessness “Over the last three years we’ve seen an increase in the number of elderly persons in our shelter. I attribute it to ‘system failures’ – nursing homes closing, a geriatric center that closed. We get hospital discharges and mental health discharges all the time. We have hospitals discharging people at 3 a.m. without any notice, without any care and without any medication. How can you do that? Because our shelters have 24-hour reception, those people come here.” “We tell other organizations that we can’t care for these people. But we do have beds – as minimal as they are. We are struggling because we don’t have the staff to deal with elderly people who are homeless. They require a higher level of care even than younger people generally.” “Our shelter intake unit says that we’re seeing a much older, sicker, and more disabled population coming to the shelter than we are prepared to serve. For years it was just the young substance abuser coming in or the middle aged alcoholic. Now people are older and have more medical needs when they enter the shelter system.” “We move people of all ages out of the shelter and into the community but elderly people keep coming back to the shelter because they don’t know how to survive without family, social service and income supports.” “One issue when we try to access nursing homes for elderly shelter residents are that the people are using drugs even though they’re elderly. Nursing homes are not structured to care for people with mental health or drug issues. They end up stuck in shelters because nursing homes won’t admit people who abuse drugs.” “The trend toward de-institutionalization among mental health facilities and nursing homes is a factor that leads to increased homelessness among the elderly. If people are to stay in the community, they need more community-based support services to help with whatever they need to do.” “The challenge is to keep the homeless shelter from being the new mental health institute. If you’ve got the bed, you have the problem.” Housing Shortages Lead to Homelessness “We don’t want homeless shelter to be permanent housing, but there is a lack of housing to move elderly people into. For the over 60 elderly population, the waiting list for subsidized housing units for the elderly and disabled is just ungodly long. There’s just not enough housing. People face two year waits on the waiting list.” “When I began working with the homeless population 20 years ago, we used to have a lot of contacts with personal care boarding homes. We seem to no longer have those. They were a perfect setting for the elderly and medically fragile people. There was one in
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