Opinion: San Diego’s Senior Population Is Growing Rapidly. How Do We Plan to House Them?

20 Years of Voice: For our 20th anniversary, we asked community members, local leaders and thinkers to share their vision for the next 20 years of the San Diego region, and what we can do today to make that vision a reality. You can read all of our anniversary content here.

Paul Downey is the president and CEO of Serving Seniors in San Diego.

We all aspire to be old. Older adults are doing their part here in San Diego. The dramatic increases in the senior population will impact every facet of our community for decades. 

For the first time in American history, adults aged 65 and older will outnumber minors under age 18 by 2034, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In San Diego County, the California Department of Finance Demographics projects more than 910,000 people will be ages 60 and older by the year 2030 – a 130 percent increase from 2000. One in five people will be over 55 by 2050, compared to just one in 10 in 2000. 

Overall, San Diego County lacks enough age-friendly resources including healthcare, public transportation and, most of all, affordable housing. The lack of housing affordability is the single most urgent, overarching issue for our seniors. 

As a community, we have not done nearly enough to address these issues today, let alone plan for the seismic population increases ahead. 

The Elder Index, developed by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, demonstrates how quickly older adults are falling behind in their ability to afford their basic needs including housing, healthcare, food, transportation and other essentials. Two in five San Diego seniors cannot meet these needs. Statewide, the number is almost half.

It should be no surprise then to learn that 30 percent of San Diego’s unsheltered population are ages 55 and older – a number that is increasing annually per the Point In Time Count. This is the population we work with at Serving Seniors, San Diego’s largest nonprofit organization devoted to providing critical safety net services for low-income and older adults experiencing homelessness. 

Nonprofits like Serving Seniors can advocate and help lead the way toward thoughtful, data-driven solutions using the most cost-effective methods possible. But we simply do not have the financial resources to do it alone. It will take a significant investment of both private and public funds to tackle this problem. 

Serving Seniors’ new affordable senior housing complex in Clairemont, the Paul Downey Senior Residence, offers a real-life blueprint for the solutions and challenges that lie ahead. 

It took seven years to build the project. This was not due to zoning challenges or permitting. In fact, the City of San Diego issued necessary permits for the project in just 25 days. It was the complex funding process required by the State of California that caused the delays. 

Serving Seniors and partners had to secure five different government funding sources to cover the $43 million cost of the project. Each funding source added approximately $15,000 per unit in cost. Imagine how many more units could be built in California if the financing process was streamlined and focused on getting projects built quickly.  

The solution is straightforward: the State of California should create a single pool of federal, state and local funding with a single application process, like the funding model utilized here in San Diego by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. This would expedite construction, save money and reduce development time by two-to-three years.

Serving Seniors is currently advocating at the state level to help drive the policymaking discussion to make this happen. In the meantime, we can’t wait. We must adopt an “all-of-the-above” strategy.

First, many older adults can work and want employment. But they cannot get hired due to ageism, lack of training for current workplace needs and rigid thinking by employers. Many older adults could avoid poverty with a part-time job earning $500 to $1,000 monthly to augment the national average Social Security check of $1,800 per month. 

For those unable to work, shallow rental subsidy programs can make the difference between somebody being housed or unhoused. The Serving Seniors Needs Assessment and subsequent studies such as the UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative 2024 study on senior homelessness finds that cash stipends of $300 to $500 per month would prevent two-thirds of older adults from falling into homelessness. 

While there is pushback on the idea of “giving away money,” the average cost in California of providing shelter and other basic services to an unsheltered individual is nearly $42,000. Would you rather spend $42,000 a year on a temporary solution or $6,000 for a preventative subsidy? 

Those are just a few ways we can better support our growing senior population amid the affordability crisis. Other important options included shared housing offerings, family reunifications and an investment in job training programs.

After working in aging for 30 years, my view is that there must be more urgency to find practical, affordable solutions. Failing to care for our most vulnerable seniors is not morally, ethically or financially the right thing to do. Yes, it will be expensive. But the cost of doing nothing is greater, and the human cost will be unimaginable.