Unhoused | Aging Matters

[Music] I raised four kids worked for 30 years with one company and when you've done that all your life and then you hit rock bottom and you're trying to get back up it's kind of hard because the rest of the world looks at you different for those who can't shake the idea that these folks are morally deficient I would ask them you know do you have a relative who's an alcoholic everyone's got a relative who's an alcoholic are they homeless because of it do you have a relative who's made a bad business decision who's gone through a divorce you know who's even broken the law maybe right are they homeless because of it and most of the time the answer is no the reason that I spend all of my days working on housing and homelessness even though I spent so many years training to be a physician is that I realize that there is no medicine as powerful as housing when people are homeless everything else falls apart people are exhausted they don't get any sleep they are highly likely to be sexually assaulted physically assaulted this is hard y this is so hard I don't wish this on nobody I really don't I've never hurt anybody or caused any harm on anybody in my life for me to have to suffer the way I've had to suffer and I've suffer major funding for aging matters is provided by the West End home Foundation enriching the lives of older adults through grantmaking advocacy and Community collaboration the Janette Travis Foundation dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the Middle Tennessee Community the HCA Healthcare Foundation on behalf of triar Health additional funding provided by Jackson National Life Insurance Company the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and by members of npt thank you hello kings and queens I see we got my celebrities coming through I'm on the streets but I'mma put it like this if it wasn't for the contributor which I work for and people say that's homeless they're just a bunch of drunks there b a bunch of uh drug heads they can go get a job it is a job this is not no easy task being out here on the corner trying to sell paper to people but at the same time it's a job and be honest with you it's a job that I love because I get to meet Beautiful People this is very good they they get a A+ for me thank you Queen thank you King y'all be blessed me safe thank you Sean's been selling the contributor since 2010 it's a local Street newspaper featuring articles about people experiencing homelessness by selling the paper he not only earns money but he's also connected to friends and Services I ended up without a home cuz I just got out of prison and I don't drink never have I don't do drugs never have it's just one of those unfortunate moments that you just when you've been locked up so long you don't know what to do people come to us they don't even need to have ID right they come to us they experience training but then we bring them into the community right so as they sell the papers and we tell everyone take the paper because when they sell out that glimmer of hope like this may work right then they come back and we start developing a relationship with them and now we have this whole other department called the cover team where we we you know we housed seven people last week right so we apply them for housing we connect them to food stamps um we connect them to sore which is SSDI or SSI um and we we start surrounding them with a resources to help lift them out of homelessness hello kings and queens whoop whoop I see that you wh My Bodyguard right now contributor is helping me get an apartment I they helped me get a voucher and I'm looking for a place to stay right now the housing Choice voucher often referred to as a Section 8 voucher provides a way for people with very low incomes to rent housing for $3 % of their wages but only one in four eligible families receive federal rental assistance without access to an affordable apartment people risk becoming homeless and for aging adults Street Life takes a tll woooo at 52 it's it's hard I mean it's not your body is not the way it used to be when I was young like I like I was saying I stay out here every day all day because number one I love my job number two it put a roof over my head even though it was a motel but I'd rather be at a cheap motel than sleeping on the ground guys care to buy a paper only $2 folks these are the guys I worry about the most because as they get older and their health starts to age you know you have a bad week you can't pay $300 that week and so it's not like the hotel's going to let you stay I mean you could be there for 10 years and they'll still boot you out so um those are the vendors I really worry about and so we have a lot of vendors who are senior citizens or over 60 the fastest growing group of people experiencing homelessness are older adults it's estimated that people experiencing homelessness who are 65 and older will triple between 2017 and 2030 based at the University of California San Francisco Dr Margot cushelle has been studying homelessness for more than two decades her research exposes the extreme Perils of homelessness among older adults you know there are these studies that look at what you would expect from someone in their 70s and 80s in terms of their memory or their ability to walk or their how often they fall things like that and what we found was that the folks in their early 50s who were homeless really looked like people in their 70s and 80s in the general population we found an incred incredibly High mortality rate almost a third of our participants um you know have died within 5 to 10 years of being in the study a lot of our vendors um who have even worked their way into housing with us as they've gotten older you'll see that being homeless really took a toll on their health so they'll end up dying prematurely we've had a rough year we've probably had eight vendors this year pass away so many of the folks that we study who are homeless have paid into the Social Security System their whole lives they're not going to live long enough to be able to draw that money back out I think we've left our older adults without a safety net and we've done so just at the time where we have this calamitous housing situation where there's not enough housing I got sick and had to leave the carnival show I worked for for which I worked for for 30 years and when I got here the apartment I got it just ate through my savings and I ended up just I went to the women's Mission wasn't there 45 minutes I had to leave uh another homeless lady was trying to get up on my bed and steal my dirty clothes and it woke me up and I lost my temper and I'm one of them people I'm not staying there where I'm going to end up getting in trouble where I'm somewhere trying to get help so I got my stuff and I left and I went out in the woods and made me a camp it's more challenging at being 54 and homeless and having medical issues because first I have no insurance no job to pay for anything so I had to be able to prove to the hospital that I'm homeless I have no income so I could get their Indigent care which covers a lot of the the stuff I need except for medication until recently Cynthia was an active vendor for the contributor which was her sole source of income but health issues made worse by chronic homelessness have prevented her from working the issues I'm facing now is I'm waiting now to get a surgery CU I've had a drain tube in my gallbladder for almost 6 weeks now and I got to get the surgery done but with unsanitary conditions you can get an infection around that wound area and so I left my Camp to come stay with a friend temporarily I can at least have a better chance of no other infection setting in but having temporary shelter versus a home of your own are two different things her friend is living in Section 8 Housing and the lease forbids both long-term guests and pets making eviction a real threat to both her and her roomate you got lay down and you want to B it I have an emotional support animal which helps me with a lot my high blood pressure issues stress my anxiety issues and it's kind of hard people like oh well we don't want no animals at all and you can still show them the letter from your doctor stating that I benefit from having her and they still it's no and I mean it's either be able to stay with a friend or be out there in the elements with this going on where I can pick up an even worse infection in my system and it's just it's like every day it's you know you don't know what's going to happen from one minute to the [Music] next I deal with this daily uh it's wet sometimes and you know it's not always the best circumstances but it's better than where I just come from but now since we've been here at City roads and with my our case work workers we have starting to get a help at hand here Dave and Terry are a married couple from Madison a Suburban neighborhood in Northeast Nashville after a series of personal tragedies they're now experiencing homelessness for the first time well we had lost a our home to a fire and yeah we had a home we lost my husband was he David almost lost his life in that in that fire he um had smoke inhalation was hospitalized for several days um things never really got back financially right after that um and when he lost the use of his leg um we we moved in with our good friend um who when he passed and we were basically just out out in the street and not even camping skills you know before this never been camping either one of them no no no you know I mean and they literally told to get out of the house and we rolled she rolled me down the street does that help any that always helps a little bit yeah you know whether people were first homeless before 50 or after 50 there was trauma that led to their homelessness people don't choose to be homeless well I was a barber for about uh 22 years in Old Hickory and we had some tragedy um quite a bit of tragedy when we lost our first child he was 19 his name was Patrick and he drowned in the swimming accident in 2012 it was really hard on us all uh I I lost the ability to even go back to work at the time so that was the beginning of of of the end really uh so to speak in 2020 in April we lost our our daughter Ashley Nicole to an accidental fentanyl overdose she was a beautiful young woman she was 14 months older than her brother who tragically 14 months later committed suicide himself Austin uh took his life after his sister so U we have Jessica Lynn remaining and um bless her heart she's also having a very difficult time with with things I'm sorry I really understand that the experience of being homeless is a traumatic experience and for a number of people they need to have a I'm going to call it a program of recovery from that trauma Nashville will tell you that we have a housing first approach which is that we move folks into housing and then we help them deal with the traumas and stuff that they've gone through unfortunately we don't have enough hous housing to move folks into according to a 2021 report by Metro Nashville's affordable housing task force Nashville needs to add more than 52,000 housing units by 2030 in order to keep up with a growing demand and nearly 70% of those units need to be affordable to those with extremely low incomes many of whom are already unhoused so that's where the need I think for Transitional Living Spaces like we're running here out of our church building um are important because they at least provide a way to get somebody out of this experience of being on the streets into a place where they have a warm bed and a place to take a shower and eat a good meal and and generally have a better standard of life Jay Vorhees is the lead pastor at City Road Chapel in Madison along with free showers and laundry services his church is also home to the mobile housing navigation Center it provides transitional housing to 15 people as they move toward permanent housing while Terry's been living inside David is making due with less so in that particular case Terry's husband David was in a wheelchair he was handicapped and our facility is not handicap accessible we wish we had an elevator to the third floor we don't and so because there were no other housing options in Nashville that would work for him we chose to allow him to pitch a tent uh on our property so that he could be in close proximity to her in their case I think they both were starting to look at physical limitations and and just the whole reality of getting older um and we like yeah we got something's got to change so I know he's down there I know he's safe and it's kind of romantic unfortunately uh in our time out there on the street and not having a home and both of us having some significant physical problem problems and and pain developed an issue with drugs not that there's any excuse in the world for but we were using drugs to numb the pain of physical pain and the abandonment issues and just the trauma of being out there in itself so uh this program offered us the opportunity to to participate in a methodone program and it's been everything uh for for us as far as changing the way that we we think the way that I think about just life in general getting up every morning is is is new and something to look forward to today people often think that homelessness is about substance use it's about drug problems alcohol problems mental health problems but that is not what causes a region or an area to have more homelessness you go to a state like West Virginia a state I know and I love West Virginia does really poorly on measures of mental health and substance use they have some of the lowest homelessness in the country why they don't have a lot of pressure on their housing markets if you look at what drives homelessness what drives rates of homelessness it's explainable by the amount of housing you have for your extremely low-income households when we last Saw Cynthia she and her dog sassy were staying in a friend's apartment while Cynthia was waiting to have surgery she'd hoped that by having a clean dry place to sleep she'd stay well but that hope was shortlived me and my roommate kind of got into it he has some problems of his own and with some people especially at his age you have to overlook them and just go on your way and do what you're going to do hey he you doing okay yeah I had my gallbladder remov last Friday and then I had to go back to camp on Saturday to sleep in a tent because I had nowhere else to be and then early Monday morning I had a severe pain that went across the whole top of my stomach and it knocked me on my knees within days of the original procedure Cynthia is back at the hospital experiencing complications I was scared to death because don't know what you're facing out there um with just having the surgery I'm sore and I can't really move to protect myself very good it it's hard I mean you never know what kind of germs you're going to pick up out there anyway as it is and then when you got stitches and stuff in you it's easy to pick up anything anywhere the prospect of returning to the street after having surgery is daunting but individuals like Cynthia often and have nowhere else to go safety net hospitals like Nashville General provide Essential Medical Care for people experiencing homelessness but hospitals are designed to treat patients not house them in fact studies show that for older adults prolonged hospital stays can increase the risk of infection and disrupt care due to bed shortages for both patient and provider the lack of options is agonizing it hurts to be sent out when you're hurting and they can obviously see that you're in pain and they're just like well you got to go you can't stay here like well the only place I got to go is in the woods now I'm out here and I'm wounded I'm very sore if somebody was to come in and try to attack I couldn't help protect against nothing right now come here baby oh come here mama been gone a while my dog sassy is my protector she very watchful over the camp she's she helps with my anxiety when I start having an attack she's right there with me she's the big clown she's a goofball she's everything she's [Music] everything we live in a society that gives people very little margin and at the root of this crisis is the extraordinarily high cost of housing 30% of the nation's homeless population and half the nation's unsheltered population live in California many of these individuals are concentrated in prosperous cities like San Francisco where the issue often dominates headlines San Francisco should be a cautionary tale for any other thriving City it's great to have great jobs it's great to have people want to live there that's terrific but you need to create the housing for everybody seniors who've spent their entire lives in San Francisco in Nashville shouldn't be forced out they should be able to stay near their Community their neighborhoods their churches [Music] I think that no region of this country is immune to homelessness and what I would say to other places is um don't become like California where it's worse it's worse because of our shortage of housing do everything you can now to to build and create those deeply affordable housing units it's not enough just to create housing you need to create housing that is Affordable to the lowest income household [Music] called I'm down because I've been working on getting housing for like four months now and the Section 8 people it takes so long for them to get back with you that it you know you get excited at first okay I'm on the list here we go but then it you'd steal nothing and I'm like okay well I'm going to end up spending the winter out here being cold and freezing to death because I don't have what it takes to be out here while Cynthia worries about the coming cold a more immediate threat emerges and puts her in Jeopardy once again the doctor called me this morning the infection from my gallbladder I guess got into my blood and I got to be in the hospital for 2 days to get antibiotics to cure it up and to complicate matters her dog sassy can't stay in the hospital I have nobody to take care of her for two days so I can get these antibiotics that I need I had to give her up there nobody a keep her for me and I have no way of getting her back this is just really emblematic of just what types of struggles people go through when they're disconnected from the community and they don't have insurance imagine if she had been in housing and she had neighbors that she knew and she had a family that could support her and she had health insurance the story is totally different and she's not the only person like that out there there's so many people like that out there hello kings and queens I see you with my bodyguard while many people experiencing homelessness are cut off from society selling papers for the contributor keeps individuals connected to a casew worker and a community it gives people like Shawn a voice and Cynthia a Fighting Chance sometimes having an advocate can make all the difference just hours before Cynthia was released from the hospital the contributor was able to find her a place in a medical respit called Village at [Music] Glencliff I I think it's amazing that they have places like this that help people it's a little hard without sassy cuz I'm used to her being at my side all the time but she's with a good family that's taking care of her right now so I can take care of my health and I can get better because without me being better I'm not good for her Cynthia is one of the very few that's fortunate enough she's in a medical respit center a housing unit that is for people experiencing homelessness but there's 's like 11 of those units and she's there as transitional housing until she goes into permanent housing and you know the problem they have is because there's not enough permanent housing that many people end up staying there right so those units aren't available for other people being released from the hospital being unhoused is nothing short of catastrophic to survive we need shelter it keeps us safe dry warm and well that's powerful medicine and while it doesn't come cheap we simply can't afford to go without it temporary I'm thankful being blessed a lot of people out there fighting to help me get this fresh start and I want to make it happen [Music] myself [Music] major funding for aging matters is provided by the West End home Foundation enriching the lives of older adults through grantmaking advocacy and Community collaboration the Janette Travis Foundation dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the Middle Tennessee Community the HCA Healthcare Foundation on behalf of TriStar health additional funding provided by Jackson National Life Insurance Company the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and by members of npt thank you

Channel: Nashville Public Television

Views: 379,695

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Id: BE3fzq95CEg

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2024