‘Old and outraged’: Life isn’t good for seniors right now

This is not how I expected the end of my life to look.

I just celebrated — if that is the right word — my 85th birthday. And after working all my life, I am officially poor.

I’m lucky: I live in federally subsidized housing in Conshohocken. I waited for 2½ years for it, though, putting my name on every wait list in the area I could find, then calling constantly to check on the status. I was basically waiting for someone to die so I could take their apartment. Finally, my name got to the top of the list, and I moved in two years ago.

It’s called “limited income” housing — but that’s a euphemism. My rent was raised twice in August and is now $1,110 for a one-bedroom apartment.

Every month, I get a Social Security check for $1,204. Once I pay my rent, I’m left with $94 for everything else — food, clothing, and gas and other expenses like car insurance. All of this has gotten significantly more expensive lately (on Thursday, new data showed inflation had raised prices by 8.2% this year), but my income hasn’t changed enough to keep up.

That $94 is also supposed to cover my medical expenses. I have Medicare, but that only pays 80% of the cost of outpatient services. I can’t afford supplemental insurance, so if anything goes wrong, I could be bankrupt.

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Social Security gave us a cost-of-living increase of 5.9% last year — about $60 in my case. Enough for a pizza party with a few friends, but not much else. Social Security just declared that next year’s increase will be 8.7%, the largest in decades. I will be glad to have it, but it won’t cover everything.

Here’s where the outrage comes in: I earned my first paycheck at 14, to buy the sweater my mother said was too expensive. I worked until I was laid off at 72 years of age. I paid into Social Security all my life. I wrote and published eight cookbooks, I worked in advertising, public relations — anything that would keep a roof over my head. I never made big bucks, but I saved as much as I could — if I had an employer and they offered any kind of savings for retirement, I took the maximum offered. So I have a modest savings, which I am burning through at an alarming rate. I tried to save enough to cover my retirement years, but for better or worse, I’m pretty healthy, and could live to be 100. Once that money is gone, I can’t afford to stay here.

I didn’t think at the end of my life I’d see things that I hoped never to see again.

My neighbors, as near as I can determine, also worked all their lives. One is still working part-time because her Social Security check does not even cover the rent. There are others who cannot afford the $1.75 it costs to dry their clothes at the communal laundry in our building.

For any kind of benefit, like help paying your Medicare premium, you have to navigate a serious set of obstacles, including a lot of paperwork. I discovered that one of my neighbors, who has lived in this building for seven years, didn’t realize she has been eligible for assistance with her utility bills; she has paid them in full for seven years.

Here’s another reason I’m angry: The world is in chaos. I didn’t think at the end of my life I’d see things that I hoped never to see again, like book bans and rising discrimination against LGBTQ kids and women contemplating back-alley abortions. After having three kids in four years, I broke the law by taking birth control, which in 1962 Connecticut was illegal. And now, the suggestion is out there that we should “reconsider” contraception.

Worse, so many of the problems that plagued society throughout my life are still with us. A few years ago, I was delivering a collection of canned goods to the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry in Germantown, only to discover it was closed. As I got back in my car, another pulled up and a young woman got out, obviously dressed for work. She had two kids with her and was upset that the food pantry was closed. So I opened the trunk of my car and said, “Help yourself.” She asked if I was sure, but then took me up on my offer. I hate that, after more than 80 years, we still have to watch working families starve.

Meanwhile, some problems have actually gotten worse over the course of my lifetime. When I was a kid in Philadelphia, we never had to worry about getting caught in a crossfire on the way to school or the market. I never worried about the collapse of democracy in the United States until Jan. 6, 2021. Now I look at my great-nephew, just 1 month old, and I tremble for him.

When it comes to the elderly, the state isn’t doing enough to help. The price of housing shouldn’t increase more than our income does, and in times of inflation, it would be nice to get a corresponding decrease in rent — perhaps by the amount of inflation — given how much everything else is costing. The state and federal governments need to do a better job of communicating what financial assistance is available to the elderly with low incomes, and make it easier to get — maybe automatic for people who qualify. Most important, Medicare needs to cover more medical expenses. My neighbors and I shouldn’t have to worry about losing our homes because we fell or got sick.

As a nation, we should be ashamed we aren’t doing this already. We shouldn’t be leaving so many people without essential needs like food and shelter and medical care, particularly those who have worked and paid into the system their entire lives. My neighbors and I feel forgotten. And I’m outraged that, at the end of my life, it has to be this way.

Margaret Guthrie lives in Conshohocken.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.