For years, Baby Boomers, Millennials, and now Generation Z have been at odds over who exactly is to blame for the way our punishing economy is leading to stable living. almost impossible for the younger generations.
Now, It seems that the tables are beginning to turn, and Millennials and Gen-Zers don’t feel as sympathetic.
Baby Boomer homelessness rates are skyrocketing, and many Millennials and Gen-Zers feel it’s their comeuppance
Boomers have enjoyed a level of financial comfort unprecedented in American history. But as more and more boomers, who were born between 1946 and 1964, retire, that prosperity trend is undergoing a surprising reversal.
Elderly Baby Boomers are the fastest growing group of homeless people, a development not seen since the Great Depression.
Several studies have shown that America’s homeless population has been trending older for years. TO 2019 study led by the University of Pennsylvania Social policy professor Dennis Culhane found that in the early 1990s, only 11% of the country’s homeless people were over 50 years old. In 2003, that figure had risen to 37%.
But now, those over 50, which includes Baby Boomers and the oldest Generation
“The fact that we’re seeing homeless seniors is something we haven’t seen since the Great Depression,” Culhane told the Wall Street Journal in September 2023. He also pointed out PBS News Hour that homelessness over 60 has always been exceptionally rare in the United States, until now.
The lingering impacts of the Great Recession, the US housing crisis and inflation are fueling Baby Boomer homelessness
The Great Recession of 2008, also known as the Global Financial Crisis outside the United States, greatly reduced, if not eliminated, the retirement savings and investments of many Boomers. Now almost Half of the generation has no savings. to talk about.
Inflation is also to blame. Prices on the rise Everything we have seen in recent years has eroded the benefits of programs like Social Security and Medicare.leaving seniors without savings or retirement benefits, unable to keep up, like the rest of us. And wage stagnation means that the jobs they can get don’t pay anywhere near a living wage.
All of this has combined with America’s absurd housing market to create a disaster, not only because of high home prices, but also because of skyrocketing rents, especially as more and more rental properties are gobbled up by corporate landlords.
But many younger generations have little sympathy for boomers.
Homelessness is a heartbreaking experience for anyone of any age. Homeless people experience staggering rates of police harassment, are frequently victims of crime, and get sick more often than the rest of us, all on top of having to live and sleep outdoors. But for those who are also elderly, these problems and their impacts are magnified.
But given how punishing the economy has been for younger generations, and many Boomers’ complete lack of empathy or willingness to listen to the simple mathematical realities of the economy, many Millennials and Gen-Zers are having trouble feeling anything more than a kind of schadenfreude about the plight of homeless Boomers.
“Baby Boomers are becoming homeless,” TikToker @straightouttasalem he said in a video in September, “and that’s what spending decades being a ‘chosen one’ for capitalism will get you and, frankly, everyone else too.”
Millennial comedian and TikToker Graeson McGaha brought the situation into clearer focus by offering homeless boomers the same dismissive and unempathetic advice that many of them have offered us younger generations during our endless economic struggles.
“I wonder if they tried to make it on their own,” he mused sarcastically. “Have you considered living within your means, or getting a side job or maybe a second job because, you know, avocado toast is expensive?”
These shots are either instantly relatable or inhumanly cruel, or maybe both, depending on your sensitivity. But these critics are absolutely right. To some extent, boomers brought this on themselves.
Boomers have voted time and time again for politicians and policies that set the stage for the homelessness crisis.
As a bloc, boomers have spent their adult lives continually voting for everything that has created all of our current crises, from predatory tax cuts to economic reforms and trade policies that have hollowed out the American economy while enriching far-flung nations.
The two forces that are essentially driving them into homelessness, the 2008 financial crisis and our current housing crisis, can be explained, however reductively, as the only logical repercussions of the politicians and policies that boomer voters have voted for time and time again.
Of the implausible Reaganomics fantasies and the Nixon-era policies that allowed it; to Bill Clinton’s disastrous Wall Street reform and repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act That gave rise to our current real estate economy; to George W. Bush’s absurd tax cuts (while waging war, no less); and the boomers’ reaction to Obama’s attempts to moderate all these disasters by voting for Donald Trump in 2016, they are, in the most literal sense, reaping what they have sown.
As McGaha so aptly put it on his TikTok: “This is the same generation that doesn’t believe in anything until it happens to them personally.” That arrogance and arrogance are now turning into a shocking and heartbreaking punishment.
But that vision also gives a pass to predatory politicians and their media collaborators who have spent decades lying, exploiting fear and bigotry, and demonizing anyone who dared to challenge their mendacity to convince Boomers to continue voting for those policies.
We are all responsible for our decisions, but that responsibility does not negate the fact that boomers voted for all this nonsense because they were lied to by leaders who promised them that these policies would make not only them, but everyone, prosperous forever. It worked long enough to fool them and at the same time enriched the politicians and the business class more than ever.
In the end, even in the midst of his frustration, @straightouttasalem said it best. As angry as she is, boomers have spent their lives voting for the same policies that now drive them into the streets; In his opinion, that does not diminish the “atrocious” depravity of the situation: “I understand karma,” he said. “But I still don’t want to see grandma standing on the corner asking for a dollar.”
We hope Boomers can learn what the rest of us have already had to learn the hard way, and we hope we can all come together next year to make the right decisions. Our future depends on it, including, for the first time in a long time, the aging Boomers among us.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice, and human interest.
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