People ages 65 and older are the fastest growing homeless population in the United States,according to a study cited by the American Society on Aging. By 2030, the study reports that those numbers are expected to triple.
In Chico, the housing aid nonprofit Home and Heart is working to decrease those numbers. NSPR's Alec Stutson spoke with the nonprofit’s founder, Sierra Schmidt, and Executive Director Cathryn Carkhuff about Home and Heart’s model to help older unhoused residents find a place to live.
On Schmidt’s view of Home and Heart’s mission
We're a home-sharing organization. We match older folks that need some help aging in place with those in our community seeking housing. And we do this by matching the two up in a methodical way based on each needs.
The home provider [has] three different types of living arrangements that they can choose from. They can ask for rent only if their need is financial because a lot of older adults are on limited income themselves, and renting out that spare bedroom increases their financial security. But other than that, the most popular option is a mixed arrangement, where the older person would ask for reduced rent in exchange for some help around the home. So that might look like having one of our home seekers provide companionship, meal preparation and transportation to doctor's appointments in exchange for the partial or full rent.
On why Carkhuff says Home and Heart shifted its original focus to housing homeless older adults
“We started as an organization that was trying to service students struggling with housing — which is also true — [but] we've seen that older adults are more often in crisis and losing housing. And even though we're not a rapid rehousing program, per se, the majority of our calls are people who are in a crisis situation and losing housing quickly, and coming to us desperate for housing.”— Cathryn Carkhuff, executive director of Home and Heart
[Home and Heart is] sort of born out of the Camp Fire. And that took an existing housing crisis and made it worse. It's 2022, and we're still seeing that the housing situation in Chico is very bleak. There's a lot of really great new construction that's happening. But what we're seeing is following a state and a national trend that older adults [have] the fastest growing homeless rate in our country, our state and our community. So in our work with other shelters, housing advocates, and housing providers, we all notice that folks are older and older. Most of our clients that we're working with are over 50. I think a lot of these folks are, you know, there's a tech divide, a lot of resources are more online. And there's an isolation that's happened through COVID. And there's a skyrocketing rent on a population that is more commonly on a fixed income.
We started as an organization that was trying to service students struggling with housing — which is also true — [but] we've seen that older adults are more often in crisis and losing housing. And even though we're not a rapid rehousing program per-se, the majority of our calls are people who are in a crisis situation and losing housing quickly, and coming to us desperate for housing.
We're not the only city and county struggling with the housing crisis. We're not the only city and county to see older adults in a housing crisis. There's a lot of different organizations around California that also do home sharing, and everyone has a unique model that's really based around what's best for their community. I think there are about 17 different organizations. Right now, we're currently the only ones in Northern California. I think home sharing is a really great model for communities that experience a lot of natural disasters. I think for that alone, we're definitely interested in expanding.
On the benefits and challenges Schmidt sees with home sharing
The benefits are multifold. First of all, [our home providers] get to decrease isolation. Isolation is the biggest issue I see trending through all of our home providers. They're living alone, oftentimes their families are not in town. They're isolated, especially during times of COVID; the bridge games they were playing with their community have ended, and they're spending a lot of time by themselves. So having somebody else in their home just to say hey, good morning, [and] sharing a cup of coffee in the morning is a really big deal.
Sharing housing with anyone isn’t always perfect. Some of the challenges … is just like people struggling to hold two hands together, always. It's important to be able to have the capacity to say, like, hey, you're not washing your dishes, and that's bothering me, before it builds up to a bigger issue. So what we do is we provide conflict resolution and effective communication coaching to help mitigate those situations.
On how Carkhuff also sees an added benefit to home sharing for families
Every time there's an older adult coming to us, they aren't usually coming alone, and usually [their family is] there with them. At every step of the process, we encourage that. It really becomes like a whole care team. When someone is coming to us, Sierra is doing social work with them too. Because coming to the point where you know your parent needs help around the house, and you can't provide it for them, that's a vulnerable situation. We see a lot of folks struggling with that process. And so it's great to be able to support them. It's also really great to have everyone's opinion on it. It makes it more challenging, as you can probably imagine. But I think including family has been an extra benefit because when the match is good, that's not just the older adult who has peace of mind. That's the entire family that also has peace of mind.
