California Free Press

As Californians Age, They Are Being Priced Out of Housing

An man who declined to be identified brings snacks and toiletries back to his tent on First Street near Los Angeles City Hall.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

By Ryan Fonseca  Staff Writer

from the Los Angeles Times

Study traces ‘causes and consequences’ of California homelessness — and challenges myths

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, June 21.

The lives of California’s unhoused population are as complex and nuanced as those of anyone else. That doesn’t sound like a radical statement, but in conversations about homelessness, it can be.

A newly released study from UC San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative aims to explore that truth with a comprehensive account of “the causes and consequences of homelessness in California,” according to its authors.

Researchers surveyed nearly 3,200 people experiencing homelessness across eight counties in the state, using their answers to create representative statewide estimates. They also conducted in-depth interviews with 365 of those participants.

The study found that nearly half (47%) of all unhoused adults in the state are 50 or older, with Black and Native American residents “dramatically overrepresented.” Notably, 41% of that share became homeless for the first time at 50 or older.

For Times columnist Anita Chabria, the report demonstrates that California’s income inequality has reached a point where “if you are older and unable to work, homelessness is a real threat throughout the Golden State.”

“As much as we want to see the average homeless person as a drug tourist dropping into too-progressive cities for the good fentanyl and lax laws ... or someone whose mental illness makes it impossible for them to live unaided, the truth is simpler — and much more devastating,” she wrote this week. “As Californians age, they are being priced out of housing.”

The study breaks down the many factors that people pointed to as contributing to their homelessness. The top reason cited was a loss or reduction of income. Researchers also broke down the primary reasons cited by both leaseholders and non-leaseholders — participants who didn’t have their name on a lease or mortgage before their most recent episode of homelessness. Non-leaseholders were more likely to report social reasons — such as conflicts with other residents or discrimination — while leaseholders pointed to economic reasons. Fleeing domestic violence was one common reason for both groups.

The authors also pointed to a few misconceptions about homelessness, including “myths of homeless migration.”

According to researchers, “90% of participants lost their last housing in California and 75% of participants live in the same county as where they were last housed.”

The research highlights the complex trajectories that lead to homelessness, but also presents compelling evidence of something advocates for the unhoused have long been saying: Poverty is in many cases the original sin. Traumatic experiences can intensify a person’s mental health and substance use — which affect an array of people regardless of their housing status. But add the stress and trauma of living on the edge of financial ruin and a vicious spiral begins to take shape.

The authors also highlighted several solutions in the form of government policy, namely confronting the lack of affordable housing for Californians living in extreme poverty.

“In 2023, California had only 24 units of housing available and affordable for every 100 extremely low-income households,” the study states.

Recommendations include:

·     Mitigating the often-sudden housing loss people experience by investing in more rent subsidies and mediation to avoid evictions

·     Responding more swiftly when people lose housing to connect them with vital services and lessen their time on the streets

·     Increasing access to substance use treatments and harm reduction service outreach

You can explore the full report here.

Off the Top of My Head

Omigod, Omicron

by John Lawrence

Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. This means that there have been 14 variants of COVID starting with alpha, right? Well, almost right. They left out two letters - "nu" and "xi." "Nu" because COVID is anything but new after two years of infectiousness and "xi" because, well, you can't offend one of the leaders of a major country. So starting off the year of our Lord 2022, the people of the world are in worse shape than when we started 2021. There have been too many false starts at a return to normalcy. Just when we were told it was safe for grandparents to hug their grandchildren again, grandchildren gave their grandparents COVID, and they died. It's mainly the old who are doing the dying. Nothing new there. First we were all supposed to look forward to last July 4 when we could gather safely. Then it was Christmas. If there's anything that's a safe bet, it's that there aren't any safe bets when it comes to predicting when COVID will be over.

Two things can be said without controversy. 1) Those who are vaccinated and boosted are in better shape than those who aren't. It's mainly the unvaccinated, in addition to the elderly, who are doing the dying. 2) The worst may be yet to come. We don't know how many more variants are potentially out there waiting in the wings to do havoc to the human race. It's the unvaccinated of the world - not just the US - who are the petri dish where COVID is experimenting with even more deadly and contagious variants. Make no mistake. The virus wants to kill as many humans as it can. So buckle up. As Yogi Berra famously said, "It ain't over till it's over."

I think back to Steve Martin's famous SNL Christmas skit. If I had 3 wishes, the first would be that all the children of the world would join hands in the spirit of peace and love and sing "We are the world." My second wish would be that the world is rid of the COVID pandemic. My third wish is that Trump would be convicted of a crime and go to jail so that he would never be President again. No, wait. There is nothing in the Constitution which prevents a convicted felon from being President of the US. My third wish would be that Congress would pass a law that Trump could never be President again. That ought to do it. But what if a new Republican Congress takes over? They could even change the law! Trump could even conceivably run for President from jail. Then when he won the Presidency, he could pardon himself and get out to wreak havoc on the world again. My first wish, however, remains that all the children of the world would join hands in the spirit of peace and love and sing "We are the world." If I had another wish it would be that all the children of the world could solve the problem of climate change so that they could live in a habitable world and not lose their lives and material possessions in wildfires, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

In the meantime the only thing that is guaranteed to prevent COVID is not masks, not tests, not social distancing, not even vaccinations. It is to isolate yourself completely. Happy New Year!

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Want to Get Rid of Social Security. Is This Fiscally Prudent or Necessary?

by John Lawrence, January 3, 2020

Republicans say social security is adding to the deficit. The nation just cannot afford to keep such an expensive entitlement program in effect. Americans pay a tax just so they can look forward to a secure retirement. In earlier years there was more money coming in to the social security trust fund than was needed to pay out. Now that money is running out and less is coming in than will be needed to pay out in a few years. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) says that the money will always be there since the US Federal Reserve can always print enough money to meet any US commitments. Former Speaker of the House Republican Paul Ryan's pet project was to privatize social security much in the way that Republicans have privatized pension funds with 401(k)s. USA Today reported,"For nearly two decades, Ryan had been a voice of fiscal rectitude, warning of the dangers of high taxes, large deficits and suffocating government debt." Republicans have wanted to scale back or get rid of "entitlements" like Medicare and Social Security for decades. But they have had no problem with giving tax breaks to the rich which also have contributed to the deficits. The Trump tax cuts alone added $2 trillion to the deficit.

One day in 2005 Ryan brought a very conservative witness to testify before Congress. After laying out his position that there was a financial crisis brewing and that Social Security and Medicare were unsustainable entitlement programs, Ryan asked the witness if he agreed with him. The witness was Alan Greenspan, a conservative American economist who served five terms as the 13th Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. I'll let Stephanie Kelton tell the rest:

"Ryan almost certainly assumed that Greenspan, a fellow libertarian [and Ayn Rand enthusiast!], would agree that Social Security's financing was unsustainable and that moving to a system of personal retirement accounts was a good idea. So, Ryan lobbed Greenspan the following softball question, expecting him to dutifully knock it out of the park. "Having personal retirement accounts is another way of making future retiree's benefits more secure for their retirement," Ryan asserted. ... [The question is too abstruse to be repeated here.]

"Put simply, Ryan was asking Greenspan whether he agreed that Social Security was in financial trouble and that moving to a system of private, Wall Street-managed retirement accounts would help address the crisis.

"To his credit, Greenspan didn't swing at that pitch. Instead, he leaned forward into the microphone and told Ryan something that shocked him: the truth. Greenspan started by dismissing the entire premise behind Ryan's question. "I wouldn't say that the pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure," he said, " in the sense that there's nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody."

The Federal Reserve can clear any payment that has been authorized by Congress. That's the truth. The US Treasury does this by auctioning off Treasury bonds which are sold to primary dealers (mainly big Wall Street banks) which are obligated to buy them. They are then marketed to whomever wants to buy them including rich investors and foreign governments. If there are more Treasury bonds on the market than there are investors willing to buy them, they sit on the Wall Street banks' balance sheets until the Fed "liquidates" them by taking them onto its balance sheet in return for money which the Fed creates by a few keystrokes on a computer. They can sit on the Fed's balance sheet forever or they can be sold if market conditions are favorable.This is sort of a roundabout process for the fact that the US Fed can print as much money as the US government needs when these needs are authorized by the US Congress.

But Greenspan went even further that day. Greenspan told Ryan that, although there was no need to worry about the program's finances, the real issue was: "How do you set up a system which assures that the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase?" In other words the finances aren't the problem; making sure that there is enough stuff in terms of human and material resources to fill the needs of retirees is. Kelton says in The Deficit Myth: "When we talk about whether entitlements are sustainable, we need to think in terms of our economy's real productive capacity. We need to think about how the economy will absorb those dollars, not where those dollars will come from." We are experiencing this problem right now as there aren't enough ICU beds, hospital facilities, doctors and nurses to take care of all the patients who have succumbed to the coronavirus despite the government's use of the Defense Production Act providing the money. It's a similar situation.

As MMT has pointed out and as billions of dollars of tax cuts added to the deficit have illustrated, as long as Congress OKs it, by means of  a round about process, the Federal Reserve can create as much money as the Treasury department needs to meet its obligations by just "printing" (actually a few keystrokes on a computer) the money. The real problem is does the economy have enough reserve capacity to actually make constructive use of the money.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump Holds Super Spreader Events with Old People as COVID Sets Record in US

by John Lawrence

Yesterday a record was set: 83,000 COVID infections, the highest ever. Meanwhile, Trump was holding a mainly maskless event in the Villages, a retirement community in Florida.The New England Journal of Medicine reported on October 8, 2020:

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

Is this Vietnam's revenge? Vietnam is the country we ravaged burning women and children alive with Agent Orange while affecting our own soldiers as well. The number of Vietnam veterans affected by the chemical Agent Orange is astonishing. Roughly 300-thousand veterans have died from Agent Orange exposure -- that's almost five times as many as the 58-thousand who died in combat. Be that as it may, the fact that the death rate from COVID in the US is 3000 times greater than the death rate in Vietnam is astonishing. Could it have to do with the fact that Vietnam is the least obese country in the world while the US is among the most obese? Out of 191 countries Vietnam has an obesity rate of 2.1% while in the US the obesity rate is 36.2%. As we know obesity is an underlying condition for COVID morbidity. The American diet may be the main underlying condition. Burgers, pizza and fast food may have been a contributing factor to the COVID death rate.

We also know that countries that have got the pandemic under control have been able to reopen their economies successfully. China is on track to expand by roughly 5% in the third quarter roughly at the same rate as in 2019 before the pandemic hit. On the other hand countries that haven't gotten the pandemic under control such as the US have not been able to reopen successfully see sawing back and forth between reopening and reshuting as the COVUD infection rate see saws back and forth. Consumers are wary to come out in public as long as the infection rate is high. Since consumption is 70% of the US economy, much larger than the European consumption rate of 50%, it is more important in the US that consumption remains high in order for the economy to sustain itself. After the election, providing Biden wins, there will probably be another installment of the CARES Act putting money directly in consumers' hands thus preventing the US economy from free fall.

Expert opinion holds that US leadership, namely Trump and his cronies, has abjectly failed in its response to the COVID pandemic. Elections have consequences. Electing clowns like George W Bush, who lied us into a tragic war in Iraq, and Trump who was Missing in Action with respect to the COVID pandemic shows the ignorant mistakes the American electorate has made. Gore and Hillary Clinton would have been infinitely more competent in dealing with the crises that America has had to face. Let's not make the same mistake again! This time we must elect Joe Biden or the US is finished as a world leader. A democracy is only as good as the competence and intelligence of the citizens comprising it. So far the American people - some of them - have displayed their ignorance and incompetence by not wearing masks and complaining that they have a right not to do so. Freedom may just be another name for nothing left to lose as the Kris Kristofferson song says.

Off the Top of My Head

How Ya Gonna Pay For It?

by John Lawrence, July 27, 2020

This is the question they often asked Bernie Sanders when he talked about the various programs that he would seek to implement as President. Programs like a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of all student loan debt, free college, free pre-school etc. Bernie never really had a good answer except for taxing the rich. Well, that was a pretty good answer, but it is not even necessary to raise taxes on the rich to implement all of Bernie's programs. Modern Monetary Theory maintains that the US, as a currency issuer, can just issue the money into the economy. The US dollar, actually a Federal Reserve Note, is issued by the Federal Reserve bank. The Fed has created or "printed" trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in 2008, with its quantitative easing programs since then and now to fund the response to the coronavirus pandemic. It's obvious that the Fed can just print money and add it to the economy. It can buy up the national deficit and debt. There is no need to worry that the US, which has a sovereign currency can ever run out of money. While you and I, states and countries which do not have a sovereign currency or which have loans in other currencies do have to pay them off, any nation like the UK, Japan, the European Union and China do not have to worry about running deficits.

Republicans have traditionally run on the mantra that Democrats will raise your taxes. Remember George H W Bush's pledge: "Read my lips. No New Taxes." Then he did go ahead and raise taxes after he got elected. Well now it is becoming obvious that Americans don't have to worry about new taxes. Social programs as well as the military can be funded by the Fed just printing the money. Of course it would not be a good idea simply to flood the economy with money for which there is no good purpose. That would lead to inflation and to a loss of trust in the dollar. Under current conditions, however, the dollar is the world's reserve currency and that is not going to change any time soon. So prudent and responsible spending is still necessary. It's just that the US does not have to worry about deficit spending. Other central banks like Japan's are doing the same. In fact Japan has a greater deficit to GDP ratio than the US does.

Which brings us to social security. The conventional wisdom is that the Social Security Trust Fund is in deficit and will be exhausted by 2035. Modern Monetary Theory says that this is rubbish. The US as a sovereign currency issuer can never run out of money. Al Gore used to talk about putting social security in a lockbox. Not necessary. It is not even necessary to debit everyone's paycheck to provide revenues for social security. This is not a program that people who have worked all their lives have "earned." It is a social welfare safety net program pure and simple. To apply basic accounting to social security as if people's payroll tax contributions were necessary to fund it is not necessary or desirable. To argue over whether or not the payroll tax needs to be increased or whether the cap (the payroll tax is just taken on the first $137,700 of a person's earnings) needs to be lifted is pointless. There was an old saw about you can't have both "guns and butter." Well, you can have both and tax relief too! We just have to determine the prudent balance between guns and butter based on other criteria. It is not true that there is only a finite amount of money based on tax revenues that determines total expenditures.

Look at reality. The US has been running deficits for years. Now we're running trillion dollar deficits. Is any creditor coming after us? I don't think so. And there is no inflation. So we don't have to limit our thinking to the Federal government's just spending what it takes in in taxes. In fact we haven't done this in years since Clinton balanced the budget when he was President.

Joe Biden has some good benefits proposed for older retirees. From his website:

"The Biden Plan will provide the oldest beneficiaries – those who have been receiving retirement benefits for at least 20 years – with a higher monthly check to help protect retirees from the pain of dwindling retirement savings."

and

"Under the Biden Plan, workers who spent 30 years working will get a benefit of at least 125% of the poverty level"

The poverty level for a single individual is $12, 760. 125% of that is $15,950. So a minimum monthly payment would be $1329. This is over twice what I am now receiving so I would be very happy if Joe is able to implement this plank of his platform. There is no way a person can live on $641 a month. Fortunately, I don't have to. Currently, the minimum monthly payout for a single individual is $510 a month. That amount is approximately $2,000 less than the annual poverty threshold for an aged individual. Bringing monthly payments for the elderly up to snuff is something Republicans have resisted for years. Then, they have tried to defund all social and welfare programs. However, funding for the military-industrial complex has been relentlessly increased come hell or high water. For that expenditure, deficits don't matter. They shouldn't for infrastructure development and social safety net programs either.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Socks It To Them

by John Lawrence, February 25, 2020

The critics have piled on Bernie about how he's going to pay for his proposals for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, forgiving student loan debt and free college tuition. Now Bernie has come out with a detailed plan about how to do it. The obvious answer is how do other countries do it? Most other advanced countries have free universal health care and free college tuition. They take it for granted. I had some passengers from Calgary, Alberta whom I asked 'how do you like the Canadian health care system?'. He replied, "It's free." I said, "Yeah, but don't you have to pay for it in your taxes?" He said, "I guess so." So he wasn't really concerned that he was paying taxes through the nose to pay for "free" health care. He didn't even know what percentage of his taxes went to health care. I suspect that once the tax structure changes here so that rich people pay more and poor people pay less that everything will be like that too.

It will cost $2.2 trillion to make public colleges, universities and trade schools tuition-free and to cancel all student debt over the next decade. It is fully paid for by a modest tax on Wall Street speculation that will raise an estimated $2.4 trillion over ten years. A Financial Transaction Tax has been talked about for years. Bernie is the only one bold enough to actually make it part of his campaign platform. It needs to be done. The financialization of the economy is what led to the 2008 economic debacle in which the banks were bailed out by the American people to the tune of trillions of dollars. So now even though it's years later, let them pay to bail out the American people. It's a good thing.

Bernie’s bill to expand Social Security will increase benefits for low-income senior citizens and people with disabilities by more than $1,300 a year. It is fully paid for by making the wealthiest 1.8 percent of Americans – those with incomes over $250,000 a year – pay the same rate into Social Security as working families. I like that a lot. Right now even though I'm still working and paying into social security, I'm receiving less than $700. a month in social security. Another $1300. a month would bring my social security up to $2000. a month. Why it's even enough to rent an apartment!

Bernie’s proposal to guarantee housing as a human right and to eliminate homelessness will cost $2.5 trillion over the next decade. It is fully paid for by a wealth tax on the top one-tenth of one percent – those who have a net worth of at least $32 million. (Bernie’s wealth tax will raise a total of $4.35 trillion.) A wealth tax on the rich! I love it. Eliminating homelessness and finally implementing the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights - priceless! It's time the millionaires and billionaires paid to eliminate poverty in this country. The wealth tax will also pay for universal child care and pre-school. By the way maybe the Congress should get on board and finally ratify the 1948 Declaration.

The Green New Deal will transform this country and be the first step in saving the planet from ultimate destruction. It needs to be extended to the rest of the world eventually as well. We need to cooperate with other countries to implement it and share renewable energy technology. This means joining China's Belt and Road initiative in terms of making sure everything under development is based on renewable energy and is non-polluting. It goes without saying that the US should rejoin the Paris Accords on climate change, but extend it even further.

All in all Bernie's plans are a wonderful and refreshing change of pace for the US of A and the rest of the world. If they come to pass, i will be proud of my country again for implementing both humanitarian policies and policies which will save the earth from a global warming catastrophe.

This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like

Many seniors are stuck with lives of never-ending work—a fate that could befall millions in the coming decades.

The Atlantic| Alana Semuels

 

A woman washes dishes in her trailer in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters.

CORONA, Calif.—Roberta Gordon never thought she’d still be alive at age 76. She definitely didn’t think she’d still be working. But every Saturday, she goes down to the local grocery store and hands out samples, earning $50 a day, because she needs the money.

“I’m a working woman again,” she told me, in the common room of the senior apartment complex where she now lives, here in California’s Inland Empire. Gordon has worked dozens of odd jobs throughout her life—as a house cleaner, a home health aide, a telemarketer, a librarian, a fundraiser—but at many times in her life, she didn’t have a steady job that paid into Social Security. She didn’t receive a pension. And she definitely wasn’t making enough to put aside money for retirement.

So now, at 76, she earns $915 a month through Social Security and through Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, a program for low-income seniors. Her rent, which she has had to cover solo since her roommate died, is $1,040 a month. She’s been taking on credit-card debt to cover the gap, and to pay for utilities, food, and other essentials. She often goes to a church food bank for supplies.

More and more older people are finding themselves in a similar situation as Baby Boomers reach retirement age without enough savings and as housing costs and medical expenses rise; for instance, a woman in her 80s is paying on average $8,400 in out-of-pocket medical expenses each year, even if she’s covered by Medicare. Many people reaching retirement age don’t have the pensions that lots of workers in previous generations did, and often have not put enough money into their 401(k)s to live off of; the median savings in a 401(k) plan for people between the ages of 55 and 64 is currently just $15,000, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonprofit. Other workers did not have access to a retirement plan through their employer.

That means that as people reach their mid-60s, they either have to dramatically curtail their spending or keep working to survive. “This will be the first time that we have a lot of people who find themselves downwardly mobile as they grow older,” Diane Oakley, the executive director of the National Institute on Retirement Security, told me. “They’re going to go from being near poor to poor.”

The problem is growing as more Baby Boomers reach retirement age—as of early 2018, between 8,000 to 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, according to Kevin Prindiville, the executive director of Justice in Aging, a nonprofit that addresses senior poverty. Older Americans were the only demographic for whom poverty rates increased in a statistically significant way between 2015 and 2016, according to Census Bureau data. While poverty fell among people 18 and under and people 18 to 64 between 2015 and 2016, it rose to 14.5 percent for people over 65, according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is considered a more accurate measure of poverty because it takes into account health-care costs and other big expenses. “In the early decades of our work, we were serving communities that had been poor when they were younger,” Prindiville told me. “Increasingly, we’re seeing folks who are becoming poor for the first time in old age.”

This presents a worrying preview of what could befall millions of workers who will retire in the coming decades. If today’s seniors are struggling with retirement savings, what will become of the people of working age today, many of whom hold unsteady jobs and have patchwork incomes that leave little room for retirement savings? The current wave of senior poverty could just be the beginning. Two-thirds of Americans don’t contribute any money to a 401(k) or other retirement account, according to Census Bureau researchers. And this could have larger implications for the economy. If today’s middle-class households curtail their spending when they retire, the whole economy could suffer.

The retirement-savings system in the United States has three pillars: Social Security, employer-sponsored pensions or retirement-savings plans, and individual savings. But with the rise of less stable jobs and the decline of pensions, a larger share of older Americans are relying only on Social Security, without either of the two other pillars to contribute to their finances. This by definition means they have less money than they did when they were working: Social Security replaces only about 40 percent of an average wage earner’s income when they retire, while financial advisors say that retirees need at least 70 percent of their pre-retirement earnings to live comfortably.

Today’s seniors are so reliant on Social Security in part because companies that once provided pensions began, in the 1970s, to turn the responsibility of retirement saving over to individuals. Rather than “defined benefit” plans, in which people are guaranteed a certain amount of money every year in retirement, they receive “defined contribution” plans, which means the employer sets aside a certain amount of money per year. This switch saved companies money because it asked employees, not employers, to take on the risks associated with long-term investing. This means that the amount people receive is more affected by the ups and downs of the stock market, their individual wages, and interest rates. In 1979, 28 percent of private-sector workers had participated in defined-benefit retirement plans—by 2014, just 2 percent did, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonprofit. By contrast, 7 percent of private-sector workers participated in defined-contribution plans in 1979—by 2014, 34 percent did.  

The recession and economic trends in the years since have also worsened the finances of millions of seniors. Some bought homes during the housing boom and then found they owed more on their homes than they were worth, and had to walk away. Others invested in the stock market and saw their investments shrink dramatically. Jackie Matthews, now 76, lost her investments during the recession, and then had to sell her Arizona home in a short sale, netting only $3,000. She now lives near her family in Southern California, renting a room in a friend’s apartment, and budgets her finances carefully, skimping on meat and never buying anything new.

But even people who emerged from the recession relatively unscathed may have a hard time saving, according to a 2017 report from Government Accountability Office. Average wages, when adjusted for inflation, have remained near where they were in the 1970s, which makes it hard for workers to increase their savings. This has had a significant impact on the bottom 80 percent of workers, for whom average wages have remained relatively constant, even as income increased for the top 20 percent of households in the past three decades.

Deborah Belleau, age 67, at the mobile-home park where she works in Palm Springs. Photo by Alana Semuels / The Atlantic.

For many seniors, the answer to this lack of savings has meant working longer and longer, as Roberta Gordon is doing. In 2018, about 12.4 percent of the population aged 65 or older is still in the workforce, up from 3 percent in 2000, according to Oakley. I met a woman named Deborah Belleau who is 67 and works as a manager at a mobile-home park in Palm Springs, California. She worked as a waitress for 30 years, and often relied on government assistance as she raised her two children as a single mother. “You just don’t think about tomorrow” when you’re more worried about getting food on the table, she said. That means that today, though she receives money through Social Security, she can’t afford a cellphone or a TV. Her rent is $600 a month. She works full-time at the mobile-home park, despite aches and pains in her back and feet. Sometimes, when she wakes up, she can’t walk. But, she says, “I can’t quit. There’s no way I can live on $778 a month,” the amount she receives from Social Security.

These troubles can be particularly hard on women. That’s in part because they typically receive lower benefits than men do. In 2014, older women received on average $4,500 less annually in Social Security benefits than men did. They received lower wages when they worked, which leads to smaller monthly checks from Social Security. They also are more likely to take time off from work to care for children or aging parents, which translates to less time contributing to Social Security and thus lower monthly benefit amounts.

At least Belleau and others are physically able to work. Some seniors without retirement savings or a safety net have become homeless in recent years as housing costs have risen and they find themselves without the ability to generate income. “I see more homeless seniors than I’ve ever seen before” Rose Mayes, the executive director of the nonprofit Fair Housing Council of Riverside County, just east of Los Angeles, told me. In America in 2016, nearly half of all single homeless adults were aged 50 and older, compared to 11 percent in 1990.

What can be done to help today’s seniors and generations to come? There are two approaches, Prindiville says: help people save for old age and make retirement more affordable. As for the first approach, some states have been trying to establish programs that help people save for retirement through payroll deductions even if their employers don’t offer any retirement-savings accounts, for example. But the Trump administration in May 2017 repealed an Obama-era rule from the Department of Labor that would have made it easier for states to help people to set up these plans. And the federal government is winding down a program, called myRA, that tried to encourage middle- and low-income Americans to save for retirement. “There are no new initiatives or strategies coming out of the federal government at a time when the need is growing,” Prindiville said.

The second approach might mean expanding affordable housing options, creating programs to help seniors cover medical costs, and reforming the Supplemental Security Income program so that poor seniors can receive more benefits.But there does not seem to be much of an appetite for such ideas in Washington right now. In fact, the Trump administration has proposed cutting money from SSI as well as the Social Security Disability Income program.

These initiatives can make the difference between having a home—and some semblance of stability—and not. Roberta Gordon, in Corona, was barely scraping by when I talked to her. A few months later, she was much more stable. Why? She’d gotten off a wait list and been accepted into the housing-voucher program known as Section 8, which reduces the amount of income she has to put towards housing. She’s still working at 76, but she feels a little more secure now that she has more help. She knows, at least, that she’s one of the lucky ones—able, in her older years, to keep food on the table and a roof over her head.

Alana Semuels is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Off the Top of My Head

Elderly Workers Paying into Social Security But Getting Less in Their Monthly Social Security Check

by John Lawrence, November 17, 2018

At the ripe old age of 77, I'm still working. Fortunately, I have good health and am still able to do so. I actually get pleasure at being a functioning, productive member of society. However, my monthly social security check, which I started receiving at the age of 62, gets less with each passing year despite the fact that I still pay into social security due to a self-employment tax of 15.3%. Because I am self-employed as an Uber and Lyft driver, I pay the employer's and the employee's share of social security tax. The social security tax is 12.4% and I also pay 2.9% Medicare tax despite the fact that I pay a Medicare premium each month for health insurance. So old people working get screwed six ways to Sunday.

In 2016 I received a monthly social security benefit of $735.90. My Medicare monthly premium was $104.90. So the amount that the Social Security Administration deposited in my checking account each month was $631. Now despite the fact that I'm still working and paid $430. self employment tax in 2017, which should have given me an increase in my monthly social security check because the amount you get depends on the total amount paid in and I'm still paying in, the amount deposited in my account each month has gone down to $618. How could this be possible, you might ask? The answer is simple. I was given a paltry $1 a month increase in social security based on the fact that I paid $430 into it so the government made $418 off me in self employment tax for 2017. However, my monthly Medicare premium went up to $134. So my Medicare premiums are going up much more than the paltry amounts the government thinks I should get because I'm still working and paying in to social security. In short I'm getting ripped off as an elderly person who still works.

You know the government likes to screw the old and the poor. It announced in my annual letter the following: "Your Social Security benefits will increase by 2.0% in 2018 because of a rise in the cost of living." So despite the fact that I'm still paying into social security and despite the fact that I got an increase in my benefits due to a "rise in the cost of living" my monthly social security check which is deposited directly into my checking account went down by $13! How's that for a screw job?

Meanwhile, the rich got a huge tax break due to Trump's giveaway to the rich. Inequality grew even greater. The gap between the rich and the poor widened. The ranks of the homeless increased. You can't even rent a room for $618. much less buy food or medicine. The government will give much more in a monthly social security check to millionaires who don't even need it than it will to poor people that have paid into it for 60 years or more.

I am fortunate. I have other sources of income than my monthly social security check, and I'm still in good health so I can still work. I only work part time so I still get to take a 4 hour break in my work as an Uber and Lyft driver each day during which I swim, have lunch and take a nap. So I'm still able to do everything I want to do in retirement. But, if this government gave a hoot about old people, they wouldn't require them to keep paying into social social security after retirement age despite the fact they might be still working. That would have saved me $430. last year.

You Can Go Home Again Part 2

by John Lawrence

The following is a work of fiction. Contrary to the Thomas Wolfe novel, "You Can't Go Home Again," you do have a right to go home again despite your hospital doctor's attempts to have you go to a nursing home. None of the names or places in the following bear any resemblance to actual persons or places. Part 1 can be found here.

Oliver had a reverse mortgage on his house. This let him take out as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted, until the fixed amount ran out. He supplemented his living expenses from this fund. Once the cash ran out, he wouldn't be able to live there any more so he was very frugal. He also had a pension from the Post Office - he had been a mail carrier for many years - and his social security.

He complained that his pension check from the Post Office plus his social security put him just over the line so that he wasn't quite poor enough to get MediCal. If he had gotten MediCal, he would have qualified for In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) and MediCal would have paid for a caregiver to come in so many hours a week. As it was Oliver had to pay the caregiver out of his own pocket, and he could only afford a few hours a week. He was lucky to have the two volunteers from ElderAssist plus Raphael who brought him Starbucks on Saturdays plus his neighbor, Bonny. When you added it all up, Victor had plenty of help, just not 24/7 caregiving.

Oliver had an old Ford Focus in the carport that had not been driven in years. He still paid the insurance premium every month. He said that having a car visible on the property deterred thieves. The house was a modest one story which was typical in Apex Gardens. What once had been a working class neighborhood had gentrified over the years and many folks had added on and put in nice landscaping. What their homes lacked in square footage, they made up for in charm.

The local shopping center was a bit decrepit. The major grocery store anchor had closed a few years ago. The anchor was now a Union bank. They still had an ancient Foster's Freeze, a newer 7-11, a Mother's restaurant, a plumber and a bar of course where they had Karaoke on Thursday nights. Los Panchos, a liquor store and a beauty parlor rounded out the offerings. The nearest Vons was up the hill on Mission Heights Road. That's where I did Oliver's shopping.

Oliver's house was even more modest than the average Apex Gardens place. It was a two bedroom, but that's all Oliver needed as he lived by himself. His living room was decorated with a large picture of a white wolf on a white snowy background. There was a picture of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans on the wall and a tile that said "Mi Casa es Su Casa." The library that took up the wall next to the front door was filled with books mostly by conservative authors: Ann Coulter, Patrick Buchanan, Sean Hannity, James Michener.

to be continued

Off the Top of My Head

Most Americans Unprepared for Retirement

by John Lawrence

While some Americans contemplate living in RVs and hopefully avoid living on the street, rich older people are doing better than ever. Among people over 65, the wealthiest 20 percent own virtually all of the nation’s $25 trillion in retirement accounts, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Social security payments are hardly keeping up with inflation. While the government charges more every year for Medicare, which comes out of the social security payment, social security is not raised enough to keep up with the result that effectively retirees get less and less in their social security year after year. Most older people are going to have to work until they die or get too sick to work any more.

Fundamental changes in the U.S. retirement system have shifted responsibility for saving from the employer to the worker, exacerbating the nation’s rich-poor divide. Two recent recessions devastated personal savings. And at a time when 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day, Social Security benefits have lost about a third of their purchasing power since 2000.

Nearly 20% of older people have no other income than social security. For a third of this population social security represents 90% of their income. Social security payments are slightly better than the poverty threshold, but significantly less than the Federal minimum wage.

Old folks are less afraid of dying than they are of running out of money. One in 5 have no savings, and millions retire with nothing in the bank. Nearly 30 percent of households headed by someone 55 or older have neither a pension nor any retirement savings, according to a 2015 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

While COLAs have increased social security benefits by 43% since 2000, Medicare Part B payments have increased by 195%. Prescription drugs have increased 184%. Real estate taxes have increased by 147%. If the government wants to keep seniors in their homes (Ha! Ha!), real estate taxes should be waived for senior citizens.

Meanwhile Trump is slashing taxes for the rich and "reforming" the tax code by making mortgage interest and state taxes not deductible any more. Some reform.

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

Seniors Screwed Three (or More) Ways to Sunday

by John Lawrence

Senior citizens, many of whom have a fixed amount of savings at their disposal, are getting zero interest on their savings accounts. At the same time they get no break at all on their property taxes. In San Diego County, the tax assessor won't even let them make monthly payments. Instead they're hit hard twice a year for property taxes. And assessed valuations keep going up as real estate prices keep accelerating upwards. Yet there's no inflation according to the Fed.

There's a lot of inflation when it comes to rents and housing costs. That particularly affects senior citizens who can hardly afford to stay in their homes. They deserve a break on property taxes, but they'll probably not get one as City and County budgets are at risk because of poor returns on pension fund investments. That means the City or County has to take money out of the general fund to put in the pension fund. This too is the result of the Fed's low interest rate policy which only really helps the big banks.

Lord knows the banks don't give you a low interest rate on your credit cards. They pay no interest on money they borrow from the Fed, but they charge the average middle class person 15% to 30% on their credit card. Nice racket, eh?

So seniors are going to have to work if they can. If they can't work, they better hope that their savings don't expire before they do.