Opinion: Latest Homeless Count Shows Need for Rent Subsides to Help Struggling Seniors

It was no surprise when the 2024 Point-In-Time Count results reported little headway in reducing the number of San Diego County residents experiencing homelessness, and buried in the statistics was an especially worrisome trend.

The share of people experiencing homelessness who are age 55 and older is 30% of those counted, up from 29% in 2023 and 25% in 2022.

Almost half of all older adults experiencing homelessness are homeless for the first time in their lives, and nearly half are disabled. We also see a 15% increase in adults over 55 living in their vehicles, which is a troubling trend. One in five older adults experiencing homelessness is using a car or other vehicle as housing.

The geographic shift of people experiencing homelessness to east and South County communities demonstrates the effect of the city of San Diego’s camping ban. It puts people further away from accessible services, such as Serving Seniors’ Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center at 4th and Beech in downtown San Diego.

In the search for solutions, increasing affordable housing is the gold standard. But we cannot build our way out of this problem quickly enough. Increasing shelter options is a costly approach intended to be a temporary stopgap.

Just as with our health, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s time to look toward investing more in prevention of older adult homelessness.

Serving Seniors presses civic leaders to emphasize proven, cost-effect measures to prevent older adults from losing housing, including shallow rental subsidy programs and one-time diversion funding.

At the urging of Serving Seniors, two pilot programs addressing prevention of older adult homelessness are now underway at the county and city. Both implement a “shallow rental subsidy” approach, using small monthly stipends to avoid evictions instead of struggling to shelter people after the fact.

Not only can this approach provide a more humane solution, but it also saves money. Compare the cost of a proposed $500 monthly subsidy with emergency shelter operating costs of between $2,500 to $6,000 per person monthly, depending on the type of services offered.

Now we have an opportunity to expand this approach into a statewide pilot program in five California counties.

In 2023, State Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat from Merced, introduced Senate Bill 37, the Older Adults and Adults with Disabilities Housing Stability Act. Similar to the programs underway in San Diego, it would provide shallow rental subsidies for at-risk older and disabled individuals.

In introducing the legislation, Caballero pointed to the growing need for assistance for this population, citing our Serving Seniors Needs Assessment.

SB 37 would establish a three-year rent stabilization fund starting in 2025 to provide subsidies to help older adults and people with disabilities afford fair-market rent and transition to permanent housing assistance programs including the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program.

Similar programs have proven successful in Kings County, WA, and Oakland, and at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Salvation Army, which has prioritized 20% of its funding for adults aged 55 and older.

Last week, SB 37 was approved by the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee and will now move on to the Aging and Long-Term Services Committee. No hearing date has been set. Numerous organizations support this proposal, including Serving Seniors, San Diego Housing Commission, United Way, AARP, and the cities of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Alameda, Fresno and San Francisco.

Affordable housing is the end goal, but people need help now. We have a golden opportunity to address several easily preventable problems through targeted leveraging of existing resources.

From a taxpayer perspective, shallow rental subsidies are more cost-effective than street clean-ups. They offer a viable opportunity to lift up those struggling to help themselves. From a humanitarian standpoint, Serving Seniors sees these efforts as a must.

Demographics are against us. The number of homeless adults over age 55 is projected to triple over the next decade. For every 10 people who are successfully housed, 13 more people become unhoused. This is not sustainable, and it is not humane.

Homelessness takes a long-term toll beyond shivering on the sidewalk trying to find a safe place to sleep. Shallow rental subsidies can support income and buy time to find suitable rentals for permanent housing, helping individuals regain their footing and independence. It is also far more cost effective and efficient in providing prevention.

On a practical level, SB 37 should be embraced by taxpayers asking their representatives to offer solutions to the greatest number of people — and sooner rather than later.

Melinda Forstey is chief operating officer of Serving Seniors, a San Diego-based nonprofit that helps seniors in poverty live healthy and fulfilling lives.