VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – There’s an uptick in elderly people coming to a homeless shelter in Daytona Beach.
Dr. Victoria Fahlberg, executive director of First Step Shelter, said she noticed the trend in December.
Of the shelter’s 70 people, Fahlberg said 15 of them are people ages 65 and older.
“Nine of them are people who have told us that when their lease came due, they could no longer afford their rent, so they had to leave because the rent went up,” Fahlberg said.
She said it’s caused some people to become depressed.
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“It’s really depressing to get to this point in your life, and all of sudden, you get uprooted from where you’ve been — for many of them — for a long period of time,” Fahlberg said.
Sarah Andrew, 76, is one of those people who has been squeezed by inflation and is now living in the shelter.
“It was a shock at first because, you know, in my younger days, I made really good money,” Andrew said.
She said she worked consistently and even invested in real estate.
When asked if she ever thought she’d be in this situation, her answer was of course, “No.”
“Absolutely not. If someone had even hinted at it, I would’ve kind of laughed a little bit, and I would say, ‘Are you nuts?’” Andrew said.
According to Redfin, in February, the average rent price in Florida was $2,400.
In Orlando, the median rent was $1,975.
A report from Zillow shows Orlando home shoppers today need to make upwards of $121,000 to comfortably afford a typical home.
Before coming to the shelter, Andrew couldn’t find an affordable and safe place to live.
She temporarily stayed in an old hotel that charged her $700 a month to rent a room.
“It was outrageously expensive and filled with people that would come and go that had serious addiction problems,” Andrew said.
Dr. Fahlberg said this is a supply and demand problem. She claims that creating more affordable housing legislation could help.
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