Millions of seniors struggle to afford housing — and it's about to get a lot worse
Millions of seniors struggle to afford housing — and it's about to get a lot worse
A few decades ago, Leslie McIntire thought she was doing everything right for a comfortable life. She was a tax accountant in Washington, D.C., and co-owned a not-for-profit bookstore. "I had good savings," she says. "I was quite happy, quite frankly, and I was preparing to go back to school."
Then a car accident dislocated her hip and jaw, left her psychologically rattled and derailed her career.
McIntire held on in her rent-controlled apartment for a while, even after she was forced to go on disability and started burning through savings. She eventually realized she needed more help, but then had to endure a three-year wait to get into the federally subsidized senior housing where she now lives.
"And by the time I got in here, I was seriously considering going into a shelter," she says. "I paid my rent, my utilities. I had SNAP benefits for food. And I had $25 left over. And you just can't live on that in the long run."
McIntire is 69, part of the baby boomer generation that is entering older age amid a historic affordable housing shortage and rising wealth inequality in the U.S.
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Oh look, boomer chickens are coming home to roost. Maybe they shouldn’t have gutted all the social safety nets for a quick buck?
I have no sympathy for them
fuck off, my mom didn't gut your social programs. she's human just like you and me, raised three kids as a single mother working long hours, and now she cant afford her rent either. we're all in the same pot of shit and your contempt for an entire generation based on a few rich assholes who face zero consequences is just tone deaf and cruel
The few rich assholes only have power and zero consequences because they were supported. My dad supports those aholes and will get what they promised him. My mom has never voted for them and she will too, unfortunately. Who is worse the grifting manipulators or their enablers?
the easy answer
More of a clarification. Did your mom reap what she sowed? My dad did. I'm not mad at anyone for pointing that out. Neither am I assuming anyone is condemning my mom for being a boomer even though she didn't vote for this stuff.
Maybe she should have voted for people who cared about social safety instead of assholes like Reagan who gutted it.
she did
To bad majority of boomers didn't. Face it your mom and my moms generation fuck us All and now they are paying the consequences. It going be far worse for us when we are their age. So no I have no time but to feel contemp for them.
Buddy, you're jumping the gun, seriously.
Boomers have voted for their own interests at the cost of anyone else their entire lives, what makes you think this'll be different?
They'll take all the money social security had left and cancel it for gen x onwards, regardless of us paying into it for 30 years
Your right but their are boomers like my cunt mom who were poor and didn't do any of that but still voted for the ones who did.
That makes her post of the problem. No sympathy for people who lived through the greatest economy in history and failed to make it. Then voted for ppl to ruin it for the rest of us
Eat the rich, not the boomers. They're not the same.
Honestly, I'll eat anyone who's sitting on their hands and not showing up for Saturday dungeons and dragons while they complain they don't get enough magical items.
There is no change from within. The whole system is geared against that. Fall in line or your superiors will see you out. Change from without is the only way anything ever changed.
The boomers supported the rich and voted them in, leading to our current capitalist hellscape. Eat them all.
Most of us use Google, Microsoft and Amazon. They're ingrained and destroying our futures but they're convenient. Two generations from now will be saying the same about us. We as individuals can resist, but it won't make a trillion dollar company into a million dollar company. We eat the rich, none of this generation hate.
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