Many, if not all of us, are children of immigrants and yet many of us are quick to forget to care for our elders in our pursuit of the American dream. Our aging community of elders resign themselves to the dangers of living life on our side-walk, and as I traverse the streets of San Francisco in my day to day, I cannot help but notice the elders who have made the public their home. With no other solution, they resign themselves to the sidewalk, the park bench, and the alleyway. The rising rate of homelessness among California’s older adults is clear to see and the case worsens for many of our elders who face additional challenges such as limitations of language fluency–which so often is the case for our immigrant parents. Limited English fluency, healthcare, fixed incomes, limited social services, all this and more complicates our elders’ access to resources and support at a very vulnerable period. Moreover, I am sure that I do not happen to be the first to take notice of the elders who sleep in our streets, the elders who look like our grandparents, our aunties, our uncles–our family.
In a nation such as the United States, arguably one of the world powers, we have an incomprehensible indifference to our own people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 327,000 unhoused individuals lived in shelters. The figure, an extraordinarily large number for such a prosperous country fails to consider those beyond our shelter walls. The demographic characteristics of this group heavily impact adults, specifically those between the ages of 18-64, which applies to nearly 85% of unhoused individuals in the United States. At 18-64, we should be establishing ourselves in the world. At this time, we should be making a change in the world as new adults, as adults, as elders, and yet we aren’t. The individuals which should actively be changing the world are instead relegated to a life unfulfilled. We are failing our people, and more specifically, we are failing our adults–those with lifetimes of knowledge to share are abandoned by our State.
The issue of a rising elderly homeless population applies beyond the United States, noticeably in Asia, as South Korea’s elders face a mirror epidemic. In South Korea’s capital of Seoul, a generation which rebuilt South Korea following the Korean war is threatened by the growing rate of elderly poverty as about half of the country’s elderly live in relative poverty according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD). The OECD further elaborates that South Korea is ranked as the country with by far, the highest rate of impoverished elderly among the 34 developed nations of the group. Even as our countries advance, our elders are left behind. It is adamantly clear that within the vast technological and economical advancements made everyday in some of the most developed countries in the world, such changes led by the youthful visionaries of our nations have abandoned the thought of their parents in the process.
Too frequently, their American children have resigned themselves to the indifference which is so often encouraged in American society, the idea that hyper-independence and indifference to community is what gets you ahead is deadly. I see this in my peers, an indifference and tightly woven tension between themselves and their parents. This is the seed which shall grow into a deep indifference for our elders, a dismissal of our filial duties in favor of personal gain, a disregard towards the dreamers who sought a better life for their children. Though not all immigrant parents are perfect, and I am sure we are very familiar with the difficulties we as a younger generation face in the dialogues between ourselves and our parents, we however cannot allow such differences to obstruct our shared humanities. We needed our parents growing up just as much as they need us as they grow older. We cannot let American individualism obstruct that which is embedded within us and our souls.
Editors: Susan L., Joyce P.
Image: Unsplash
Footnotes:
1: Glassman, Brian. “Nearly 327,000 in U.S. Lived in Emergency and Transitional Shelters.” U.S. Census Bureau, 27 February 2024, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/02/living-in-shelters.html. Accessed 6 October 2024.
2: Novak, Kathy. “‘Forgotten’: South Korea’s elderly struggle to get by.” CNN, 23 October 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/23/asia/s-korea-elderly-poverty/index.html. Accessed 6 October 2024.
3: Hu, Elise. “A Forgotten Generation: Half Of South Korea's Elderly Live In Poverty.” NPR, 10 April 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/10/398498496/a-forgotten-generation-half-of-s-koreas-elderly-live-in-poverty. Accessed 6 October 2024.