For years, Baby Boomers, Millennials and now Gen-Zers have locked horns over who exactly is to blame for how our punishing economy creates a stable life almost impossible for younger generations.
Now, it seems the tables are beginning to turn, and Millennials and Gen-Zers don’t feel so likable.
Baby Boomer homelessness is skyrocketing, and many Millennials and Gen-Zers feel it’s their livelihood
Boomers have enjoyed a level of financial comfort unprecedented in American history. But as more and more Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, retire, this wealth trend is undergoing a shocking reversal.
Aging baby boomers are the fastest growing group among homeless people, a development not seen since the Great Depression.
Several studies have shown this that America’s homeless population has been older for years. ONE 2019 study led by the University of Pennsylvania social policy professor Dennis Culhane found that in the early 1990s only 11% of the nation’s homeless were over 50. In 2003, it had changed to 37%.
But now the over-50s, which include Baby Boomers and the oldest Gen-Xers, who range from about 43 to 58 years old, make up more than half of the homeless, and Culhane believes the over-60s are likely the fastest-growing segment.
“The fact that we’re seeing elderly homelessness is something we haven’t seen since the Great Depression,” Culhane said. The Wall Street Journal in September 2023. He also noted to PBS News Hour that homelessness over age 60 was always exceptionally rare in America—until now.
The lingering effects 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 erased, many Boomers’ savings and retirement investments. Almost now half of the generation has no savings to talk about.
Inflation is also to blame. The sky-high prices on everything we’ve seen in recent years has eroded the benefits of programs like Social Security and Medicareleaving older citizens without savings and pension benefits, unable to keep up, like the rest of us. And wage stagnation means the jobs they are able to get don’t pay anywhere near a livable wage.
All of this, combined with America’s absurd housing market, has created a disaster, not only because of high housing prices, but also because of skyrocketing rents, especially as more and more rental properties are being gobbled up by commercial landlords.
But many younger generations feel very little sympathy for the Boomers
Homelessness is a harrowing experience for anyone of any age. The homeless experience staggering numbers of police harassment, are often victims of crime and get sick more often than the rest of us, and this is all on top of having to live and sleep outdoors. But for those who are also older, these problems and their consequences are magnified.
But given how punishing the economy has been for younger generations, and many Boomers’ total lack of empathy or willingness to listen to the simple mathematical realities of the economy, many Millennials and Gen-Zere have trouble feeling anything but a kind of schadenfreude at Boomer homelessness.
“Baby Boomers Are Becoming Homeless,” TikToker @straightouttasalem said in a video back in September, “and that’s what it’s going to get you, and frankly, everybody else, too.”
Millennial comedian and TikToker Graeson McGaha brought the situation into sharper focus by offering homeless Boomers the same mocking, unempathetic advice that many of them have offered us younger generations during our never-ending economic struggles.
“I wonder if they’ve tried pulling themselves up by their bootstraps,” he mused sarcastically. “Have they considered living within their means, or getting a side hustle, or maybe another job, because you know, avocado toast is expensive!”
These shots are either immediately relatable or inhumanly cruel—or maybe both—depending on your sensibilities. But these critics definitely have a point. There is an extent to which the Boomers brought this upon themselves.
Boomers have time and again voted for politicians and policies that set the stage for the homelessness crisis
As a bloc, Boomers have spent their adult lives consistently voting for everything that has created all of our current crises, from massive tax cuts to economic reforms to trade policies that have eroded the American economy while enriching faraway nations.
The two forces that basically pushed them into homelessness, the 2008 financial crisis and our current housing crisis, can both be explained, albeit reductively, as the only logical consequences of the politicians and policies that Boomer voters have voted for time and time again.
From the distant fantasizing about Reaganomics and the Nixon-era policies that made it possible; to Bill Clinton’s disastrous Wall Street reform and repeal of Glass-Steagall Act which gave birth to our current housing economy; to George W. Bush’s absurd tax cuts (while waging war, no less); and the Boomers’ backlash to Obama’s attempts to mitigate all these disasters by voting for Donald Trump in 2016, they are quite literally reaping what they have sown.
As McGaha so aptly put it in his TikTok, “This is the same generation that doesn’t believe anything until it happens to them personally.” That hubris and arrogance now turns into a shocking and heartbreaking comeuppance.
But that view also provides a fit for the predatory politicians and their media collaborators, who have spent decades lying through their teeth, exploiting fear and bigotry, and demonizing anyone who dared to challenge their falsity to convince Boomers to keep voting for these policies.
We all bear responsibility for our choices, 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 just long enough to fool them while making the politicians and corporate class richer than ever.
In the end, even in the midst of her frustration, @straightouttasalem said it best. While she is furious, Boomers have spent their lives voting for the very policies that now push them onto the streets; in her view, that doesn’t lessen the “heinous” depravity of the situation: “I understand karma,” she said. “But I still don’t want to see grandma standing on the corner begging for a dollar.”
We hope the 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 choices. Our future depends on it, including, for the first time in a long time, the older Boomers among us.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice and human interest issues.
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