CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 12, 2024, OR THEREAFTER
BY
THOMAS D. ELIAS
“TIME FOR STATE, CITIES TO FOCUS ON OLDER
HOMELESS”
The more than 100 housing-related laws
passed by legislators and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom since 2019 have done
little or nothing to solve any of the three problems they were supposed to
stem: availability, affordability and homelessness.
That was the conclusion of the Superior
Court judge who last spring ruled unconstitutional one of the most important of
those new laws, the 2021 SB 9, which authorized homeowners in single family
zoned (R1) neighborhoods to subdivide their lots and create six housing units
where previously there was just one.
Fewer than 2,000 such subdivisions have
occurred since that law took effect, and even if they had become common, they
would have done little about the problems they were supposed to alleviate.
That’s because nothing in that law
compels any subdividing homeowner or developer to make units affordable –
another word for making them financially accessible to low-income folks
(four-person households earning less than $114,000 per year, by one city’s
standard). Or those spending more than 30 percent of their monthly income on
rent or mortgages, by another definition.
Most of the currently homeless are
unhoused because they fall into categories like those, so nothing in SB 9 ever
figured to help them.
Now comes a study showing more than half
the homeless will soon be aged 50 or older, with the proportion of homeless
over 65 due to triple between 2017 and 2030 unless something is done soon.
For the state and its cities and
counties, this turns out to be one of the most financially disastrous realities
they could ever confront.
Current law prevents emergency rooms
from turning away anyone who needs help urgently, even if they have no
insurance. The state and its local components end up footing those bills,
costing billions of dollars. A single urgent care visit by an uninsured adult
costs an average of slightly under $300, with adult homeless generally making
multiple emergency visits yearly, the number increasing as they age.
This makes the findings of the newest
study of the homeless from the UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and
Housing Initiative critically important for California, where budget
constraints have already reduced average annual spending on homelessness.
As the homeless population ages
steadily, in part due to increasing rents and unavailability of low-cost homes
in all size classes, and with the median home price in the state’s largest
county now more than $980,000 – or more than $100,000 higher than one year ago
– this problem can only grow worse.
Said Margot Kushel MD, director of the
Benioff program, “The dramatic rise in homelessness among older adults has
severe consequences for the health and safety of those who experience it and
(for) our society at large.”
She urges quick action to prevent even
more homelessness among the aging. This would not only be humane, she said, but
also financially wise. The Benioff report, for example, says “adults
experiencing homelessness in their 50s and 60s are similar in health status to
people 20 years older in the general population.”
In short, rapidly increasing older
homeless will quickly translate into vastly larger public expenses for their
medical care. Those expenses figure to continue longer than they would for
younger homeless, because older homeless adults typically experience “prolonged
episodes of homelessness,” the median length of their remaining unhoused now
standing at 25 months, or just over two years.
The report, based in part on 365
interviews with homeless individuals, showed older adults believe “modest”
financial help, including housing choice vouchers and small subsidies like
one-time payments that can get them into an apartment by funding security
deposits, can help them become permanently housed.
So the Benioff program recommends
special attention to prevention efforts targeting at-risk seniors, expanding
seniors’ access to health care before they become homeless – even if uninsured
– and expanding outreach to homeless seniors well beyond today’s levels.
All these things cost money, but
allowing the senior homeless populace to keep expanding will clearly boost
legally required spending on medical care even more. It’s a situation
dramatically outlined in a slogan from 1990s era TV commercials for automotive
oil filters: “You can pay me now (for prevention), or you can pay me later
(much more).”
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book,
"The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the
Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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