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I have a poem, this one I kind of wrote recently.

This one's called "Of Home Once Wished."

(bike bell dinging) (gentle music) (cars humming) Portland, known as the City of Roses, Bridge City, Rip City.

A place where once we were weird.

Portland has also been a city of dreams.

Dreams binds us as humans, the young and the aged.

In life, there are many paths we walk, so many glorious things for us to experience, and yet there can be many obstacles.

But to belong, be recognized and seen for our worth, are great dreams of all people, to a body beginning to grow older, there is a sense of urgency for a door that locks.

A home where one is safe, dry, and dreaming.

(gentle music continues) Always we are dreaming.

So... thank you.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (bus humming) - Portland is a gem of a city.

It is sitting in one of the most privileged real estate locations in the world.

And for most of its history, it has been magnetic and drawn people to it.

(bright music) - In the Tri-County area, we have had approximately 1 million people move to the region since 1990.

We did not in fact pick up the pace of housing that we needed to accommodate that growth.

For the average senior household there are three census tracks in the furthest northeastern portion of the city of Portland where somebody could afford to rent a home.

In terms of buying a home, there are no places that are affordable for the average senior household.

- I would say it started in the 1950s and '60s by tearing down single residents occupancy apartments.

We slowed down federal investment in housing in the '70s and '80s and thereafter, and we didn't build nearly enough housing for all the people who wanted to live here.

And you really start to see strong increases in rents and housing prices during that period.

(bright music continues) We have a population in this country and in this state and in this city that is getting older, and so consequently the homelessness population is getting older with it.

- This is the baby boomer population.

And as they continue to age, we would expect to see a growth there.

What we wouldn't want to see, and what is a red flag for me, is the number of those adults who are living unsheltered and experiencing homelessness for the first time.

Because it means that we are not intervening at a point where we could be keeping people inside.

- Dating back to the New Deal, we created public policies to help older adults like a social security.

If you sort of follow their rate of growth and inflation over time have not kept pace with rent inflation or house price inflation.

So you've got a tension there for people who have arrived late in life, that even if they have saved some money, some of them have not saved enough to be able to hold on to their housing, given the accelerated price of rents.

(somber music) - I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and I was born in '52.

So in '52, Jackson, Mississippi was not the kind of place that African Americans wanted to grow up in, so my parents, they took the first train smoking and they moved to Portland, Oregon.

Well, my dad, he wasn't really around.

My dad was an alcoholic, my mom was a Christian, so they didn't get along, so he had to go his way and we went our way.

You know, some people that had dads, the dad would give them money and stuff, but I didn't grow up like that.

Yep, I graduated in the class of '70.

You guys wasn't even... Were you guys born in '70?

- No.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(everyone laughing) - I didn't grow up with a dad in my home and I think it's really, really important for a kid, for any of us really.

I think it's important to have a dad in your home rather than just a mom.

(gentle music) I worked at a barber shop when I was like seven years old.

When people got their hair cut, I would brush their back off and make some money doing that.

I shined their shoes if they wanted their shoes shined, they used to call me Hustling Herb.

I mean, I had a hustle in me, and I really did.

I met this guy and he taught us how to sell candy, he had a speech and everything.

I really took that like a father's relationship.

What I did, I went and got my own candy crew and I taught them how to do the same thing that I was doing by knocking on the door, it went around.

"That's Hustling Herb right there, That's Hustling Herb.

What's up, Hus?

What's up, Hus?"

So anyway, that worked for me really, really fine.

So I mean, I grew up, even though I grew up without a dad in house, I still grew up learning how to be responsible and learning how to do things that kept me having money and stuff like that.

Man, it was some good days, some good old days, man.

- My dad, he's been working his whole life pretty much, as far as I know.

Yeah, Hustling Herb, I believe he got that name back when he was probably a young teenager.

I think he got his first car when he was like 14.

It runs in the family, it runs in the family for sure.

(both laughing) She's gonna be excited.

- I went to the program and became a carpenter.

I really started spreading my hustle, doing remodeling stuff, I bought a house that I remodeled it, and the bank, Wells Fargo was like, "Hey, you know what, man, you got this nice home, you got all this equity in it.

You can get another little loan and do some more remodeling to it."

But I didn't really see the full picture.

I don't know if you know what a predatory loan is.

And then I thought about it, I said, "Well, how much?

What you trying to..." They said, "Well, we can give you a loan for $50,000.

My payment went from $830 a month, to $2,000 a month, and I couldn't afford it.

When they put a foreclosure on my house and took it from me, kind of threw me way off track.

(somber music) It's not a good feeling, man.

To lose a house, man.

A house, that's your biggest investment you gonna ever have really, pretty much, unless it's a big business or something.

But to lose a house, man, it's pretty devastating, so when I lost it, I stayed with my sister for a while, but I was getting high.

I was getting high to kill, pretty much to kill the feeling about just losing the house, man.

(somber music continues) - Like, if I had a word to describe him.

Id say gentle.

- My kids, they gimme life, man, they really do.

They gimme life, and I'm holding onto it.

I know what it was like not having a dad.

I just told myself that I'm gonna be the best dad that I can be.

My clean date is 11-16-17.

That's my clean date, and I got clean this time and I just said, "No matter what, I ain't going back."

I joined the No Matter What Club, no matter what happens, I'm not gonna go back.

- He's just kind of slowed down in his momentum.

But I feel like that's just how it goes as you get older.

He doesn't need to be over exerting himself.

I've always seen older people be wealthy.

And so I always thought like, "Yeah, once you get older, you're gonna be a wealthy person," and then just to see it's the opposite.

(keys rattling) - Phew, you know what?

Life ain't getting no easier.

If anything it's getting tougher - I feel like he should be not still having to go out and work, and yeah, he has to.

It's not even if he wants to, he has to.

- I like to work, it gives me life, but it's hard to keep a job at my age, it really is, so I'm just hoping that I can keep my health to where I can be healthy enough to work and continue to be able to be financially able to take care of myself.

A lot of these places keep going up.

They cost too much to even afford to rent.

The lease will be up in October.

It's kind of nerve wracking.

I need to come up with a plan.

I need to come up with a plan that will allow me to have a place that I can call home and not be in one of them homeless camps.

I dread day that that might happen to me.

I dread the day, because I'm trying to stay ahead of the game.

(cars humming) (somber music) (somber music continues) - Growing up in New York City was interesting.

I grew up poor, I did not grow up privileged.

I was a fat kid.

I was a shy kid.

I was an introvert.

I loved to read and draw and that's pretty much how I spent my days.

I had a tumultuous childhood, a lot of stuff in the household.

I was a natural dreamer too.

My window looked out to the George Washington Bridge and I used to sit on my window and watch the bridge and look at it and know that there was something over the bridge, more.

(somber music continues) And did you say yes on cream, though?

- I'm good.

- You're good, just the tea?

- Yeah, just the tea.

- Okay, and then you won't need that.

But yeah, so this is you know, home sweet home.

(somber music continues) I got to Portland in '99.

I was in my later 30s.

So I raised my kids here.

It was a good city for that, actually.

It was 2015 and I was with my second husband and all my kids have moved out because they had grown up.

And this was when all of the landlords were starting to notice that they could charge more.

So I went from $850 a month, they wanted to charge me $1,625 for the apartment.

I just was floored.

And I mean, my husband had just lost his job and hadn't gotten another one yet.

And it was all on me to pay the bills.

And I mean, I had an okay job, but certainly, I couldn't pay the rent and the utilities and, and, and, and.

We had a minivan and we thought we'll do that van life.

And that worked out for a couple years until the day the city of Portland towed my van.

So there went my housing.

So, and then I started living in tents.

And then I got back in, my addiction got ahold of me again, and so I relapsed and there I mired myself for a while.

And like a plant, I put my feet in the ground, but I did not grow.

So, yeah.

(somber music continues) So living in a tent, what's it like, right?

The longest camping trip you've ever been on.

The roughest camping trip you've ever been on.

The camping trip that you go on and everything goes wrong and it rains the entire time, and your tent leaks, and everything you own gets wet, and you're cold.

I get it, it's hard to think about your mom being homeless.

It's hard to think about your mom living in a tent out here, and some people think like, "Oh, they should have done more."

Why?

They're grown children.

They've got their own lives to be periled by.

They don't need to be periled by my life, I'm a grownup.

So I was grown-upping, just not in a good way.

I was really self-destructive for a long time.

The hardest thing was being invi but being in everybody's face.

You wear your homelessness.

It's hard to explain that.

Even though I tried to dress nice, somebody told me once my hands gave it away 'cause they were dirty or my fingernails were dirty or something.

You just don't have the faucet to turn on.

If you don't adapt, you don't survive, and I survive things.

I survived my childhood, I survived my first marriage, I survived homelessness and I was gonna continue to survive homelessness.

Just, you know, it was, it was what it was.

And then I lost my husband, and that's when I decided I really need to be housed again.

So, yeah.

(somber music continues) It's hard to get housing, it's really hard to get housing.

It's not where you can just go and say, "Hey, I'm ready to be housed, let's do it," right.

It doesn't work that way.

It's not streamlined, it's not one organization, and everybody has a different criteria.

I didn't score high enough on their little test they give you, they ask you a bunch of questions, and apparently I didn't score high enough because I wasn't needy enough, so yeah.

(somber music continues) (somber music continues) Hope is so much more than just a word.

For some it's a lifeline.

(somber music continues) Ow.

I don't know, it's just nice.

It's just gonna be nice to have a kitchen.

It's gonna be nice to bake biscuits.

Even though I can bake outside, but it's taxing, but it's just gonna be nice to have a freaking bathroom.

My God, is that gonna be nice.

(somber music continues) New Year's eve we found one of my campers that was in my campsite passed away, he was 65.

Nobody wants to grow old in general, definitely nobody wants to grow old homeless.

I didn't wanna die out here in the end.

I didn't want my kids to find that out at all.

And that really does cross your mind.

(somber music continues) (cars humming) (tram whining) - A lot of people have stereotypes about people experiencing homelessness.

I certainly have at times in my life.

And it's important to understand that we do not see homelessness at the rates we do now here in Portland, in places that have more housing, because the number one driver for homelessness is in fact the lack of available affordable housing.

- If you look at a map of the United States and see where the incidents, the rate of homelessness is the highest, it is the highest where housing costs are the highest.

Housing is the primary driver.

(somber music continues) - It is unfortunately all too possible to think, "Well that would never happen to me."

Those people who are experiencing homelessness are somehow fundamentally different.

And one thing that has struck me with the older adults work is that when we talk about older people experiencing homelessness for the first time, it puts this idea in people's head that it can happen to anyone.

You can get to that age, you can work, you can even have a pension, but it's just not simply enough.

I think it's easy to sort of overgeneralize and say, "Oh, the baby boomers are quite a wealthy generation, and they're sitting on a mountain of home equity."

Well, that is true for some of the baby boomers, but the ultimate expression of the housing crisis is the expanding number of older adults who are homeless, who are unhoused, who can't make any of those options work.

It's gone from cutting back on all these other necessities to perhaps an overcrowded situation, perhaps a substandard house, to no house.

- So this guy's walking along and he hears a voice, and the voice says, "Hey, buddy, can you help me out?"

The guy looks around, he doesn't see anything, he doesn't see anybody, and he is like, "That was weird."

So he continues along on his merry path, and once again he hears, "Hey buddy, can you help me out?"

He looks around again, he's like, "What is this?

Where's this voice coming from?"

Then he looks and he looks down, there's a frog there.

He's like, "Oh, did you just speak to me?"

He says to the frog.

And frog's like, "Yeah, I was wondering if you could help me out, if you could just kiss me, I would turn into a beautiful woman and make love to you every night and just make you the happiest man in the world, and you would have riches beyond belief."

The guy sits there and he contemplates this for a minute.

He reaches down, he grabs the frog, puts the frog in his pocket, and he starts to walk along.

A couple minutes pass, and the frog's like, "Hey, buddy, you never kissed me."

And he says, "Well, at my age it's more interesting to have a talking frog."

Ta-da.

(laughs) Oh, I know I'm in the same boat with women.

I'd rather have a talking frog than a woman, any day, guaranteed.

(somber music) I have to be positive.

I mean, if you get laugh or cry, which one do you pick?

I'd pick the laughter, thank you.

(somber music continues) My childhood... My mom kind of stopped really taking care of kids at around age 10.

I kind of raised myself, really.

My dad kind of drank a lot and liked to destroy the house for some reason.

I don't know why, and he beat on my mom.

And I had to keep the peace in the house a lot.

Keep my sisters from harm.

(somber music continues) Books is what... Books, reading, hold a very, very dear place.

And they saved my life.

I mean, they just did.

If I hadn't been reading at that age, I don't know the answer to that, I don't know.

They took me away.

It got me to a place where I was happy.

(somber music continues) I've made some vain attempts at trying to get into housing.

I've never had any callbacks to that, I wish that I would.

I have not had one.

It just seems like you get on a list and you wait.

I need a place so that I can clean up and get a job, but I need a job to get a place.

So it's kind of a catch-22 really.

And I don't think anybody's really gotten a handle on how to explain to the housed people why we're out here and what the plight is.

They just don't understand it.

They think we're out here just 'cause we're lazy or we don't wanna do anything, or we're stupid, or we're drug addicts, or whatever.

There's a lot more to it than that.

(crow squawking) (distant cars humming) I turned 63 four weeks ago.

I mean, personally, I feel like I'm 25.

I mean, my body doesn't exactly feel like it, but I mean, mentally I do.

People have started calling me OG and old man and asking friends that I hang around, “Why you hang around with that old guy?” It's starting to hit me that I'm actually older.

As soon as I wake up in the morning, I have to go to the bathroom now not 10 minutes from now, 15 minutes.

I can't even lay in bed and try to wake up.

I have to get up, gather my stuff and run.

But it's like, I'm limping, my knee hurts, my hip hurts.

You're definitely older, you're not the young chicken that you were once, you know?

Interesting.

(somber music continues) Open the door, close the door, get in bed, it's nice and comfy, it's not hard like cement.

It'd be very nice, it'd be pretty, very nice.

And the bathroom's right there, Right there, a bathroom?

Boom, right there, I don't have to worry about it.

I don't have to run a block or two blocks and hit a bathroom wondering if I'm gonna make it.

(train whining) (train continues whining) (train screeching) - You wanna ask again?

- Yeah.

At your age, what's the hardest part about living outside?

- When you get sick, you ain't got nobody to help you.

Having nobody and nowhere and nothing.

It's very, very difficult.

There's a lot of predators out here, and they pray on the weak and the alone, and the old.

(crows squawking) - It's very scary to be out here and to be a woman of my age.

I need shelter, I need housing, that's the bottom line.

- You get swept every week or so so it's really hard to set up anything permanent.

You dont have a home, how do you rest very well.

I mean, you don't got a bed, I mean what do you got, you got a cot or a seat.

I'm just slipping through, I'm slipping through the cracks and I'm just getting by.

(somber music continues) (crows squawking) $200 is food stamps, $1,000 is from the federal government.

I can pay rent if it was $500 but there is no $500 around.

- I can fall through the cracks I think I don't wanna fall through the cracks again.

I've gone to the police and asked them for vouchers.

I've gone to the homeless shelters and asked them for vouchers.

I can't get in, I can't get my foot in the door.

If I could get my foot in the door and get a place.

Just gimme a chance, give me a chance, I deserve a chance, I deserve... As do all of the people out here, I just want my chance.

(cars humming) - I don't know how much time I have left on this planet.

I don't see that many old people out here.

I mean, everybody else will have their own thoughts, "Well, they're old anyway.

Get rid of 'em, they're a burden."

And they do think that, I know they think that, I've heard it.

I like life so much, I don't wanna leave this.

I mean, it sucks sometimes and it's painful sometimes, but I do thoroughly enjoy it, immensely.

Way down to my very core being, so I don't wanna give that up.

I am extraordinarily frightened of dying, to the point some days I don't even live because I'm too afraid of dying.

(somber music continues) I am frightened to death of dying.

Weird pun there, but it's gonna happen.

(somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (distant chatter) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) - This is a country that should be judged by the conditions of its most vulnerable citizens.

(somber music continues) For all of us who can witness the living conditions of people who are homeless, especially those who are unsheltered homeless.

If that's how this society is being judged, we are not doing well.

(somber music continues) There is no other crisis that the public is saying is more important than this one.

People interact, they feel terrible about the conditions that they see, and if we don't start to move the needle in a productive, compassionate way, I think you're gonna have just an accelerating distrust in government.

- We don't do well by our elders to start with in a lot of parts of our community in this country.

And the idea that we are allowing people to age into homelessness is deeply distressing.

- Becoming homeless late in life, it ages you considerably and shortens longevity abruptly.

So first and foremost, this is a humanitarian crisis for those who are experiencing it.

- It counters the idea that retirement, growing older, is supposed to be a space where you're enjoying a different phase in your life.

And instead you're experiencing something that no one should ever experience.

We are limiting people's lives by leaving people outside.

(somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (no audio) (gentle music) - That private part of housing, I think leads some people to believe that housing is your thing and you should have figured this out when you were younger.

You should have invested better, you should have made a better choice.

And it is not too late to think of the public good that is housing, housing as a public good.

- The long-term answer here is to fix the housing market, accelerate housing production in every corner of the state.

And especially a push at the lower levels and the more affordable housing.

Really, in terms of an answer, that is the only way we get out of this crisis.

- Our population projection for the state of Oregon requires that we build 550,000 units in the next 20 years to deal with our deficit as well as the new arrivals to Oregon.

That is a lot of housing.

(gentle music continues) - While you are doing that, you've got to work on the here and now and the crisis that is right in front of us.

So you have one group that may have struggled with homelessness for much of their adult life, and here they still are struggling.

They are likely to have more severe needs.

They may struggle with behavioral health, they are probably struggling with substance abuse disorders at higher rates, and you would need a more robust permanent supportive housing where you have a long-term behavioral health and substance abuse treatment depending on what the individual circumstances are.

I think the other typology are those who've been stably housed for much of their adult life and now have a shock in their life.

That population, I think, can be served more with shallow subsidies.

- The best intervention is to prevent the homelessness from happening at all.

- Much better prevention, keeping people in their housing to start with.

- And it doesn't necessarily take a whole lot to do that.

There's a lot of talk about shallow rent subsidies, a little bit of extra money every month can make such a huge difference.

- Something that brings down the cost of housing from 50% or 60% of their income now, you bring it down to 40% or maybe all the way down to 30% to keep people out of that status and allow them to live safe and healthy, enjoyable lives for as long as we can.

(gentle music continues) - Every single person deserves basic human dignity.

To sleep and sleep safely, to rest, to eat, to be able to claim a space as their own.

We can't do that without housing.

(keys rattling) (feet shuffling) - More sideways.

- Yep.

Slowly.

- [Mover] Yeah, very slow.

(broom rustling) - Close your eyes and describe home for me.

(Bronwyn laughing) - You're sitting in it.

I mean, I've only been in my housing for three weeks, and it's been eight years since I've had a home, and it was something that I dare didn't even dream about, let alone think about, you know?

(gentle guitar music) Section 8 is a federal program and it's been 20 years since it's last opened, so they opened it up for 2,000 people to be accepted, so they ran a lottery.

So, and I did, I got a voucher, one of 2,000.

It feels like I'm one of the lucky ones, that's what I am.

I feel lucky, and I'm not one that has a lot of luck at all.

(gentle guitar music continues) (kettle whistling) So the first night in, the first thing I did was turn the faucet on.

Seriously, I stood in the kitchen and just turned the faucet on, turned the faucet off, turned on the faucet, turned it all the way to the hot, turned it all the way to the cold, turned it back to the hot, turned it off.

That was huge.

That's something as an unhoused person, a housed person doesn't... They have no concept, that was so huge that I could just turn a faucet and I have water, hot water, cold water, just water.

I can wash, I can shower, I can cook.

You think you're okay... you're not, you just aren't.

You think you are, but you're not.

And it's dumb stuff like that that lets me know I'm not.

So it'll take time.

It'll just take time.

Me and the kitties both.

(gentle guitar music continues) ♪ I wanna fall asleep ♪ Dreaming about easier things ♪ Hear the rain on the roof instead of on me ♪ ♪ I'm a ghost out here living unseen ♪ ♪ When I was at the cliff ♪ But I didn't know until I fell off ♪ ♪ I was just like you and now I'm not ♪ ♪ Working hard and then it all went wrong ♪ ♪ Do you know how it feels to be so far down ♪ ♪ Do you know how it feels to be all alone ♪ ♪ Do you know how it feels out here living on the edge ♪ ♪ Of lost ♪ Of lost (gentle guitar music continues) ♪ I wanna be okay ♪ I'm tired of everything coming unwound ♪ ♪ I walked all day to make inches on the mile ♪ ♪ There's a mountain where there used to be a pile ♪ ♪ I got a good heart ♪ And it is bigger now that it's been over the edge ♪ ♪ And it's breaking for the ones the world forgets ♪ ♪ And it's praying now for second chances ♪ This program is brought to you by AARP Oregon, your wise friend and fierce defender.

To learn more, visit aarp.org and by Pacific Source Health Plans.

Learn more at Pacific source.com.