Many Seniors Are Becoming Nomads To Survive

As with stories of elderly people who can't afford to eat or purchase their medications, I don't get it. Unless someone prefers traveling, which I can understand and appreciate, there are a ton of programs that would provide housing, food, and other necessities to people for nothing, or on a sliding scale based on income. Unless you are living in the country illegally, you've probably got Social Security, and, of course, in some ways, there are special privileges for those who are here illegally.

True, sliding-scale or free housing in large cities might be limited to neighborhoods where you might not want to live, but I'm not persuaded that this is the case, necessarily. Nevertheless, there are plenty of places around the country where this is not the case. I live in a town of only a couple of thousand people, yet we have seven or more apartment complexes that rent on a sliding scale, and they are nice enough that a lot of people choose to retire to one of these places when they no longer want to maintain a house any longer, and some of them pay full-price. A former neighbor abandoned his house rather than continue to pay the mortgage after his wife died, and he's living in one of these apartments and loving it. On a sliding scale, he gets enough from Social Security to pay the rent and he no longer has to make repairs or even shovel the driveway or sidewalk.

There are programs like Meals for Me that provide meals for seniors at a very low price. They're not great meals. They're kind of like TV dinners, as far as taste goes, but, if I could talk my wife into it, I could live on that stuff, save a bunch of money, and probably lose weight, since the proportions are more realistic than we generally do when we're cooking our own meals. But, she doesn't like them and enjoys cooking, and I don't know if I'd care to be eating that stuff while she's eating stuff that's far more palatable. When it comes to survival, though, there's no need to go hungry.

Either some states don't have senior programs that are as good as the ones we have here in Maine, or some people don't know how to look for them, but these are federally-funded programs so I would assume there is an equivalent in every state. We're not particularly poor. We're certainly not wealthy, but we have some income coming in besides our Social Security, yet a couple of available programs here in Maine have paid for the entire cost of insulating our home and bought us a heat pump, the combination of which has helped us go from about six tanks full of heating fuel a year to just over two, and another program for seniors pays for at least one tank of fuel a year, and more when the winters are especially cold. The same agency also pays seniors who can drive to transport those who can't to doctor's visits, dialysis, or even grocery shopping.

However, I can imagine someone, particularly an unmarried or widowed senior, deciding that the rest of his or her life might be more interesting traveling around the country like a vagabond, especially given that Social Security payments are made directly into the bank account now, so they don't have to be somewhere to pick up a check every month. I get that, but I can't imagine why this would be a necessity for someone who would rather have an apartment to live in.

 

I had an aunt who suffered a major stroke. She was in a nursing home and I don't think anyone expected her to recover. While she was there, her son (a real estate agent) sold her home. She had a full recovery and had to sue her son to get the money from the sale of her home back. She spent the rest of her life, more than twenty years, I think, traveling around the country.

She had raised a bunch of kids and had a bunch of other relatives who had moved all over the country, so she visited relatives for the rest of her life. She wasn't poverty-stricken, since she had the money from the sale of her house, Social Security, and I think some retirement benefits from her late husband, and I doubt that anyone felt that they were being put out when she came to visit for a week or two. She visited me when I lived in California, where I had a cousin who she also stayed with for a time. When I moved to Texas, she visited me there too and had other relatives in Texas, as well.

She finally ended up in a nursing home in Texas, but it was in the only one there that provided good care to residents. She finally passed away there, while I was still living in Texas. I'd visit her often, and would also stop by to see her when I'd bring patients back to the nursing home from the hospital since I worked for the ambulance company that covered McAllen.

I suppose one could say that she was a vagabond, but I think she probably enjoyed her last twenty years more than she would have had she remained in her home alone.

 

Having moved several times in my life, that's not something I can relate to.