Connect with us

News

65, single, seeking a roommate: More seniors are being priced out of living alone

Published

on

65, single, seeking a roommate: More seniors are being priced out of living alone

Nora Carol Photography/Getty Images

David West raised four kids in Los Angeles working as a Hollywood cinematographer — no mean feat in such a pricey city. But a few years ago, his life took a hard turn.

“Everything went south. Divorce. My brother died,” he said. “My dog died.” On top of that, a string of clients who’d hired him for decades also passed away.

Advertisement

Before long, he’d burned through cash and damaged his credit. He moved to Fresno, Calif., and now, at 72, West is in a situation he never imagined at this stage of life but one that more and more older people are facing: renting a room in the home of a complete stranger.

“I tried to move, like, an apartment’s worth of stuff into a room,” he said with a laugh at how impossible it seemed. “You know, how do you do that? I still haven’t figured it out.”

West looked into a housing subsidy, but his income is just over the limit, so he’s grateful for the cost savings of a house share. His roommate, also an older man, covers Wi-Fi, utilities and cable. West volunteers his photography skills at the church where the man is involved and shares his Costco membership.

“It’s that give-and-take thing,” he said. “It’s trying to help each other out as much as possible.”

In this photo, David West is standing outdoors in Brazil and is holding a camera. Behind him is a body of water and a thick cluster of trees.

David West while working on a documentary in Brazil.

David West

Advertisement


hide caption

toggle caption

David West

Advertisement

Roommates are skewing older

The high cost of housing means more people are being priced out of not only owning a home but also renting alone. The share of adults 65 and over looking to rent with a roommate has tripled in the past decade, according to the listings site SpareRoom.

“They’re not the biggest group of roommates, but they’re by far the fastest growing,” said the site’s communications director, Matt Hutchinson.

SpareRoom finds that roommates in general are skewing older. Young people are living with their parents longer, unable to afford moving out or simply trying to save up. Meanwhile, more people in their 50s, 60s and older are unable to make it on their own.

“Maybe 10 years ago they’d have looked at a one-bed or a studio and thought, ‘Well, I’ll rent that,’” Hutchinson said. Now “they’re looking at prices and going, ‘There’s no way I could afford that.’”

Baby boomers have been aging as housing costs across the U.S. have spiked. In 2023, more than a third of households headed by adults 65 and over struggled to pay housing costs, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, and the share is even bigger for women living alone.

Advertisement

“Older adults are more likely to be housing-cost burdened than working-age adults, and that gets more severe with age,” said Jennifer Molinsky, who researches aging and housing at the center. “It’s climbed up the income scale. So more and more, you know, middle-income people are struggling with housing costs than ever before.”

Older adults are also more likely to face major life events that can lead to financial strain. Caezilia Loibl, chair of the Consumer Sciences Program at Ohio State University, has researched the financial toll of chronic disease and the loss of a spouse at an older age.

“The shock is enormous,” she said, “and we see it very clearly in our data how the debt burden goes up and financial vulnerability goes up.” People were more likely to fall behind in debt payments, for example, see their credit score drop, file for bankruptcy and face foreclosure.

The upside of learning to live with less

In this photo, Darla Desautel is standing next to a tree trunk and has a hand on her hip. She's wearing a light blue jacket.

Darla Desautel at an arboretum in Arizona. She appreciates not only the cost savings of a shared rental but also the flexibility to move to other places when she wants.

Darla Desautel


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Darla Desautel

Saving money may be the top reason that more older people are house-sharing. But some see other benefits.

Advertisement

“Oh, I think it’s wonderful. Maybe more of the way people used to live,” said Darla Desautel, who’s 74 and has rented with roommates for years, though she’s currently house-sitting in Minnesota.

She loves the flexibility of not being tied down and being able to move where she wants, and she thinks not living alone is healthier. She got along especially well with one roommate who also was an older woman.

“We had a lot in common, and that’s pretty special when that works out,” she said.

To be sure, there can be annoyances. One place was kept too cold in winter and too hot in summer. There can be smelly cat litter boxes or a roommate who talks on speakerphone in a common area. “Noise is huge. A lot of people think they’re quiet when they’re really not,” she said.

If she could afford it, Desautel said, she would rent solo, though “with a short-term lease.” But that would eat up more than half her income. In addition to receiving Social Security, she still works occasionally as a leadership consultant and coach, and she is a licensed secondhand dealer selling “other people’s junk.”

Advertisement

Desautel is proud that she has learned to whittle down possessions and live with less. “Right now I can move across country with 10 boxes shipped USPS and take a plane,” she said.

For now, that’s her plan, driving this time, to continue her house-sitting gig in Arizona for the summer. And when that ends, she’ll find her next roommate.

News

House Adopts Budget to Unlock $70 Billion for Immigration Enforcement

Published

on

House Adopts Budget to Unlock  Billion for Immigration Enforcement

The House on Wednesday narrowly adopted a Republican budget blueprint that would allow the G.O.P. to blow past Democratic opposition and pour an additional $70 billion into immigration enforcement through the remainder of President Trump’s second term.

The measure is a crucial step in Republicans’ plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, ending a shutdown that has lasted for nearly 11 weeks.

Republicans pushed through the plan, which the Senate adopted last week, on a party-line vote of 215 to 211, with one independent lawmaker voting “present.” That set the stage for the G.O.P. to begin working on a special budget measure, shielded from a filibuster in the Senate, to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, the two agencies charged with carrying out the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“This is the moment we take the keys, and we say, no more of this nonsense,” said Representative Jodey C. Arrington, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Budget Committee. “And we open up the people’s government and we restore the safety and security of the American people.”

The budget plan — which stalled in the House for more than five hours as Republicans fought among themselves over measures on agriculture and ethanol that had nothing to do with immigration — was part of the two-track strategy that Republicans agreed to earlier this month to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding lapsed on Feb. 14.

Advertisement

Democrats had refused to fund the department without new restrictions on federal immigration agents’ conduct, and Republicans had refused to agree to any. Then last month, Senate Republicans struck a deal with Democrats to allow the spending measure for the Department of Homeland Security to pass with no funding for or restrictions on immigration enforcement. The G.O.P. would then seek to fund ICE and C.B.P. through a process known as reconciliation, which exempts certain budget bills from a filibuster and allows them to pass the Senate on a simple-majority vote.

Approval of the budget plan was a crucial first step for Republicans to begin the reconciliation process, which will deprive Democrats of the ability to block the bill funding ICE and C.B.P. President Trump has directed Congress to pass that measure by June 1.

The spending bill to fund the rest of the department, which has passed the Senate twice without objection, has remained stalled in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to bring it to the floor, even as the White House has urged swift passage.

Several rank-and-file House Republicans said they would not vote for the spending bill without seeing progress on the bill funding immigration enforcement. It was not clear whether adoption of the budget blueprint would be enough to sway them.

The budget resolution would allow the two Senate committees that oversee immigration enforcement agencies to write legislation that increases government spending by up to $70 billion each. Republican leaders have said that they expect the total spending amount to be closer to $70 billion in total.

Advertisement

Democrats attacked Republicans for giving more money to immigration agencies that already received a large fund as part of Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy bill. They argued that such money would be better utilized to address Americans’ concerns over affordability and health care.

“Republicans refuse to address the rising costs that Americans are dealing with because this administration refuses to put the people first,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington. “Americans of every political stripe do not want more money to go to ICE’s slush fund.”

Some rank-and-file Republicans had been concerned about such attacks, and they sought to expand the scope of the budget bill to include priorities that they argued would be felt more directly by most Americans.

But the White House and congressional Republican leaders rebuffed those efforts, worried that adding other priorities to the bill would slow its passage and could prolong a record shutdown.

Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Supreme Court appears to lean toward ending TPS for some migrants

Published

on

Supreme Court appears to lean toward ending TPS for some migrants

The U.S. Supreme Court

Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to potentially proceed with mass deportations of more than a million foreign nationals, including those from Haiti and Syria, who live and work legally in the United States.

Until now these individuals have been accorded temporary legal status because their safety is imperiled by war or natural disasters in their home countries.

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990, and every president since then — Republican and Democrat — has embraced TPS. President Trump, however, is trying to end it.

Advertisement

On Wednesday his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, told the justices that the statute clearly bars any court review of the administration’s decisions. And he dismissed the idea that a separate law established to provide procedural fairness does not allow the courts to review the Homeland Security agency’s decision-making either. Pressed by the court’s three liberal justices, Sauer insisted that the courts cannot review anything.

“None of those procedural steps required by the statue are reviewable. That’s your position?” asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“Correct,” responded Sauer.

“What you’re basically saying is that Congress wrote a statute for no purpose,” Sotomayor said.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that under the statute the secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to consult with the U.S. State Department about what the conditions are in those countries that people have been forced to flee. What if she didn’t do that at all, Kagan asked. Or what if she asked, but the response from the State Department came back: “Wasn’t that baseball game last night great!”

Advertisement

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what would happen if the secretary used a Ouija board to make decisions?

To all these hypotheticals, Solicitor General Sauer stood firm. That prompted this from Sotomayor: “Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a ‘filthy, dirty, and disgusting s-hole country.’ I’m quoting him. He declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as poisoning the blood of America. I don’t see how that one statement is not a prime example … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision.”

Sauer pushed back, noting that Kristi Noem, the then-DHS secretary, had not mentioned race at all. That prompted this response from Justice Jackson, the only Black woman on the court, “So the position of the United States is that we have an actual racial epithet that we aren’t allowed to look at all the context.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of two adopted Haitian children, interjected at that point to clarify the administration’s position. Are you conceding that individuals with TPS status could bring a challenge based on race discrimination? she asked.

Sauer appeared to concede the point.

Advertisement

Representing the Haitians, lawyer Geoffrey Pipoly described the administration’s review as “a sham.”

“The true reason for the termination [of TPS status] is the president’s racial animus toward non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular,” Pipoly said. “The secretary herself described people from Haiti” and from other non-white countries as “killers, leeches, saying, ‘We don’t want them, not one,’” while “simultaneously enacting another humanitarian form of relief for white and only white South Africans.”

That was too much for Justice Samuel Alito who asked Pipoly, “Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a line-up, do you think you could say those people are … non-white?”

An uncomfortable Pipoly resisted categorizing each group until Alito got to his own roots.

“How about southern Italians?” Alito inquired, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Advertisement

Responded Pipoly: “Certainly 120 years ago when we had our last wave of European immigration, southern Italians were not considered white. … Our concept of these things evolves over time.”

At the end of Wednesday’s court session, one thing was clear: President Trump may be furious at some of the conservative justices he appointed for invalidating his tariffs, but for the most part, he is getting his way. Especially in light of the court’s 6-to-3 decision, announced Wednesday, which effectively guts what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act, once celebrated as a signature achievement of American Democracy.

Continue Reading

News

Springfield’s Haitian Workers and Businesses Face Uncertain Future

Published

on

Springfield’s Haitian Workers and Businesses Face Uncertain Future

When Stanley Charles, a Haitian immigrant, arrived in Springfield, Ohio, in 2021, “it was like a desert,” he recently recalled.

The industrial city had been losing population for decades, and some streets were lined with boarded-up, dilapidated homes.

To revive the city, Springfield’s leaders lured auto parts manufacturers, warehouses and other businesses to the area. But once the companies began operating, they struggled to find workers.

Then a wave of Haitian immigrants arrived, helping fill the labor shortage.

Now, many of those Haitians are facing a very uncertain future. The Trump administration wants to end Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program that has allowed about 350,000 Haitians, including thousands in Springfield, to live and work in the United States for years because of instability in their home country.

Advertisement

The program’s fate rests with the Supreme Court, which is hearing oral arguments on Wednesday to determine whether the administration has the legal authority to terminate it. A decision is expected by July. If the court rules in the administration’s favor, Haitians would lose their work permits and become subject to deportation.

Springfield, about an hour’s drive west of the Ohio capital, Columbus, could be reshaped by the Supreme Court’s decision.

A few years ago, word spread among Haitians that jobs were plentiful in Springfield. Thousands, some newly arrived to the United States after crossing the border, others relocating from states like Florida and New York, settled there.

“We Haitian people came, we began to work, pay taxes,” Mr. Charles said. “We helped this city develop.”

Between 10,000 and 15,000 Haitians live in the city of 58,000, according to county estimates.

Advertisement

The influx of newcomers initially caused friction. A local health clinic had to hire additional staff; schools had to accommodate new students; and some city services were strained.

Then during the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump and his Ohio-born running mate, JD Vance, repeated a baseless claim — that Haitians in Springfield were eating their neighbors’ pets.

White supremacists descended on the city, bomb threats were made against schools and some Haitians moved to other cities. But many remained and carried on with their lives, said Heidi Earlywine, who mentors Haitian families and teaches them English at Central Christian Church.

Now, though, the Trump administration’s push to end T.P.S. has left many Haitians anxious and injected uncertainty into the local economy.

A Haitian exodus could derail Springfield’s momentum just as it rolls out “Springfield 2051,” a road map for the city ahead of its 250th anniversary.

Advertisement

While most employers have not spoken publicly, local and state officials have voiced concern about losing Haitian workers.

“We would have manufacturers and businesses that don’t have employees,” said Charlie Patterson, a commissioner in Clark County, which includes Springfield.

“They will be looking for workers for jobs they couldn’t fill before,” he said in an interview.

The Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican who has championed the contribution of Haitians, has warned that ending T.P.S. would be a “mistake.”

In early February, a federal judge in Washington paused the government’s termination of T.P.S. for Haiti, finding that the administration’s move had been “arbitrary and capricious” and had failed to consider the perilous conditions in Haiti. On March 6, a three-judge appellate panel affirmed that decision. Five days later, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

Advertisement

Mr. Charles, 45, who worked at a telecommunications company in Port-au-Prince, fled Haiti after being threatened and imprisoned for his political opposition activities, he said.

After entering the United States in 2021 on a tourist visa, he qualified for T.P.S. under the Biden administration. He also applied for asylum, which, if granted, would allow him to remain in the country even if T.P.S. is revoked.

For now, he operates robots at a manufacturing plant and sends money to his wife and other family members in Haiti.

“They all depend on me,” he said. “We are here because our country is not functioning.”

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending