Our Grandparents

The New Face of Homelessness

There is yet another crisis unfolding across our communities, one most people haven’t been forced to look in the eye yet. More and more seniors are becoming unhoused. Not just “the vulnerable,” not just people who have been cycling through poverty for generations, but your grandparents, your mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. People who spent their whole lives housed, working, contributing, raising families, and never once imagining they could end up on the streets.

The skyrocketing cost of living is pushing our elders, the people who raised us and built the communities we cherish, toward the streets. Let me be painfully clear: the system as it stands today is not designed for them. It is not ready for them, and it does not know what to do with them. As a result, they are being pushed into situations that are unsafe, undignified, and completely avoidable.

Shelters are already strained, but even the ones that have space cannot meet the needs of older adults. Picture your grandmother navigating a crowded dorm-style room, where the staff aren’t trained to support mobility challenges or incontinence care. She’ll end up seeking help at the hospital, will be discharged and told she is safe to return “to the community,” when the community available to her is the sidewalk.

A 76-year-old woman I know is living this nightmare in real-time. She cannot shower independently, has difficulty changing her brief, and cannot manage stairs. She should be in long-term care, or at minimum in supportive transitional housing with personal support workers (PSWs). Instead, she has been discouraged from staying at all local shelters, has been discharged from the hospital twice in the last month, and is currently paying $150 a night, money that will not last, to stay in a sleazy motel because it is literally the only place she feels safe.

To get her into long-term care, she needs to be somewhere stable so she can access the services of Ontario Health atHome. This vital lifeline provides nurse case managers, PSWs, emergency home visit nurses, physiotherapists, social workers, and occupational therapists. The organization’s mandate is to prevent avoidable hospital visits. To access their services, and to get the assessments and referrals for long-term care, she needs a home.

I don’t go out looking for new people to help anymore, I don’t need to. Those with lived and living experience know who is struggling, who is slipping through the cracks, and will bring someone to my attention because they trust I’ll try. Today my buddy, Will, reached out to tell me about three more seniors, all good people who simply need a safe place to call home. When I met with the group, they told me the institutional workers they met with indicated it would be a year before they were assigned a housing case manager.

On their own, none of their incomes can support market rent; together, they might be able to keep each other afloat. I’ve gently asked them to consider living together. It’s not ideal, and comes with risks, but they can’t afford to wait for affordable housing to become available, they won’t survive the streets that long.

This is what happens when we fail to build a system that adapts to changing needs. We push our elders into conditions no person should have to endure and then pretend to be shocked by the outcomes. We force them to fend for themselves in environments they cannot safely navigate - overcrowded shelters, inaccessible washrooms, and streets where vulnerability is instantly visible. Their health unravels, their confidence erodes, and their chances of stability shrink with every day they spend in unsafe, unsupported spaces.

There is a ray of sunshine in this awful situation, his name is Dr. Andrew Boozary.

A primary care physician, a policy expert, and the founding Executive Director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, Dr Boozary was raised in a household deeply attuned to social justice. His father immigrated to Canada as an Iranian refugee and his mother was a human-rights lawyer. Dr. Boozary brings both lived values and data-driven clarity to his work. His efforts centre on linking healthcare with housing and social supports for marginalized populations, especially people experiencing homelessness. He recently helped launch Canada’s first hospital-led supportive housing initiative, Dunn House in Toronto, combining health services and housing.

In the interview I’ve posted below, Dr. Boozary makes the case that to properly address homelessness, especially for seniors, we need systems that place dignity, stability and multidisciplinary care at the heart of the model. Dr. Boozary also makes suggestions on what you can do to help in the interview. It’s worth watching.

We need an adaptive housing system, one that recognizes the changing demographics of homelessness and responds with speed, compassion, and creativity. No grandmother should spend her final years fighting for survival in a motel room she can’t afford, no senior should be discharged from a hospital to the street, and no elder should ever have to navigate homelessness alone.

If a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable, then our elders are issuing us a warning, one we can’t afford to ignore.