Elderly Homeless: Help fund a real solution

Lisa Suhay, a Journalist, Fairy Tree Founder, Op-Ed and children’s book author who has written for the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, NPR and The Virginian-Pilot. TEDx presenter on chess said it best in her latest article below. This appeared in The Virginian-Pilot & on Vocal Media.

A Solution for elderly homeless families: From living in a self-storage unit to a real home

When women all across America who have worked their whole lives, raised families and served our communities end up homeless through no fault of their own, that’s when the conversation needs to change. That time is right now because those women have found a workaround that has turned the term “self-storage” into a literal state of being as those affordable, climate-controlled lockers here have become “affordable housing” for them.

Let that sink in and you will never pass one of those buildings without remembering that last sentence.

While younger homeless are posting about their storage unit lives the elderly have made themselves invisible, not due to safety concerns, but out of the shame they feel over having lost the American dream after a lifetime of careful planning and frugality. The reasons vary from being scammed out of their savings to having too many healthcare expenses for themselves or their spouses.

When Norfolk, Virginia’s Mayor, Kenneth Cooper Alexander, recently announced a new phase of the effort to end homelessness I was blown away by how fast our city manager’s office galvanized to take meetings and vet new ideas. The one you’re about to read about got traction immediately.

It took me four years, but I recently found a solution that got a 70+ homeless former certified nurse’s aide (CNA), Ms. Kathy, from our local heart hospital off the streets and into an affordable independent adult care home. Not a “facility.”

At the start, I believed that all I had to do was make a call to the police or the Community Services Board (CSB) to get an old lady in a wheelchair with a broken arm, kidney infection and a pulmonary embolism off the streets and into a home. Instead, it took everything I had in me. 

Sadly, America’s systems aren’t geared to the realities of an elderly homeless person in ill health navigating a system without a phone, caregiver, transportation or internet access as their faculties prematurely decline due to their environment, lack of sleep, anxiety and malnutrition. Most shelters won’t take someone who needs to wear an incontinence pad.

Too often women are homeless or in squalid motel rooms because their spouses needed a nursing home before they did, and their life savings were absorbed by the system to pay for it. Basic care for high-functioning assisted living is about $8,000 per month, with nursing homes at about $20,000 per month.

I’m the sole caregiver for my mom, 93, who lives with me due to a non-cancerous brain tumor and economics.

Those who work in social services, at a CSB and in emergency rooms care but are exhausted by not having enough resources, workers or facilities to spend the time it takes to shepherd an elderly person in decline through all of the online paperwork, meetings and follow-ups.

A back-handed Christmas miracle in 2023 happened when our homeless CNA ended up in the ER, then rehab where a worker suggested I try calling Johnson Homes. It turned out to be a game-changer.

Johnson Homes founder Janice Miles was a real estate agent who needed an affordable dementia care facility for a family member and was sticker-shocked into a whole new career path. She got investors and began renting homes she transformed into affordable independent adult care homes with on-site caregivers to help do paperwork, cook, do laundry, shop, ferry clients to appointments and more. Miles is a one-woman mini-CSB and it’s working.

Let’s use this as a blueprint in every city to get our elders off of our streets permanently. Then we can expand it to other people who are homeless.

Here’s what they need to succeed:

1. Rental properties: houses, condos, duplexes. Military getting transferred abroad but don’t want to sell? Foreclosures standing vacant? How about a long-term rental?

2. Grants and gifts from service organizations (no matter the amount): They are tax deductible since Johnson Homes is now partnered with the Four Rivers Project, run by the incomparable Lana Pressley.

3. Social media: Share this story and idea so elected officials will partner.

Elderly, ailing, homeless folks are our common ground in a world focused on our differences. We’re all aging in an unkind economy and a society that doesn’t like to hire anyone older than 50.

Ending homelessness isn’t a fantasy, it’s a big dream that’s coming true right here one home at a time on a micro level. Let’s bring this idea home.

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Your support will help us expand our efforts, add more homes, and offer assistance to our aging homeless in the form of rental assistance, personal care, and transportation vouchers as well as supplies and materials to help support the homes that house these individuals.