There is an inaccurate stereotype in Massachusetts: If you are a poor senior, you live either isolated in a distressed rural community or in an urban neighborhood. The reality is that low-income seniors also live and want to remain in suburban communities in Massachusetts, and are in dire need of housing.
The number of seniors is escalating dramatically. According to a recent study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council on the communities of Greater Boston, populations are projected to be getting much older. That includes a significant increase in the number of low- and moderate-income seniors in virtually all communities in Massachusetts.
Some 10,000 Americans a day are turning 65, and many – perhaps a majority – don’t have enough money saved from their prime working years to cover their costs in retirement.
What many need are multifamily affordable housing options that enable them to live more comfortably in retirement in their home communities. Unfortunately, in recent years the resources available to create these types of housing options have all but disappeared.
HUD Funding Wiped Out
For many years, resources existed for these purposes. One key program, dating back to 1954, is the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section 202 Supporting Housing for the Elderly Program, which was responsible for creating almost 400,000 homes for low-income seniors across the country.
Not only did the program finance the creation of housing for low-income elders, but for much of its life it included rent subsidies needed to keep seniors in their homes. These were the same kind of rent subsidies that helped private market property owners offer homes to low-income seniors, rather than convert them to market-rate units that would be unaffordable.
Private nonprofit organizations could apply for Section 202 funds for building housing for those ages 62 and older. As recently as 2011, these funds were available, and they were doubly effective because they could also leverage private dollars raised from the sale of federal and state low-income-housing tax credits. That combination, from the mid-2000s to 2011, resulted in housing complexes for seniors of low and moderate incomes across Massachusetts, creating 100-plus units at a time.
That promising era, however, was short-lived. The federal 202 Section program has been shrinking – and this year, funding for new supply has been wiped out completely.
“Section 202 was the last remaining program that created housing for the elderly in need,” said Colleen Bloom, associate director for housing operations for Leading Age, a 52-year-old association for nonprofit providers of aging housing and services.
Although Section 202 capital funds were eliminated, HUD is currently testing a very modest new demonstration project that will provide rental assistance to very-low-income elderly households, with a continued emphasis on community-based services. The goal is to make federal dollars go farther by encouraging private capital to develop the new multifamily housing, with the assurance that both the tenant population and rent assistance they need are forthcoming.
But the need is so much greater than a “demonstration project” can provide. According to population specialists, more than 1.5 million seniors already spend more than half their income on rent. By 2030 there will be six times as many seniors with unmet housing needs as there are today.
Subsidies Just Aren’t There
As B’nai B’rith Housing looks ahead to our new developments in communities like Sudbury, Sharon, Newton and Andover, we and our marketing professionals are finding that those with very low incomes are the most difficult to serve because the subsidies just aren’t there. Waiting lists for low-income units continue to grow and the demographic trends are sobering. These very communities will see explosions in the growth of their elderly populations between now and 2030. In Sudbury’s case, the elderly population will almost double.
We need programs like Section 202 and others designed to serve seniors across a broader range of affordability. The lack of such programs is a huge problem with painful ramifications.
Policymakers seem oblivious to the reality that elder homelessness is on the rise and will continue to skyrocket in the coming decade. Without action, this is a tragedy in the making on a grand scale that will affect every city and town in the commonwealth. It is time for us to come together to seek solutions to this ever-growing need. Reviving the Section 202 program would be an important step in the right direction.
Susan Gittelman is executive director of B’nai B’rith Housing, a nonprofit, nonsectarian developer and operator of affordable and mixed-income housing serving families and elders in communities of Greater Boston.
