Conflating visible homelesness with crime has become completely normal, and, well,
good job everybody.
“They basically were ticking along very poor, and sometime after the age of 50 something happened,” Kushel said. That something — divorce, a loved one dying, an illness, even a cutback in hours on the job — sparked a downward spiral and their lives “just blew up,” as Kushel puts it.
Kushel and her team found that nearly half of single adults living on our streets are over the age of 50. And 7% of all homeless adults, single or in families, are over 65.
And 41% of those older, single Californians had never been homeless — not one day in their lives — before the age of 50.
