In 2024, nearly a quarter of people experiencing homelessness for the first time were over 55
By Megan Rogers – Granite State News Collaborative
Editor’s note: The 65-year-old woman whose homelessness is a key part of this story asked for anonymity in order to participate in the piece. Her identity is known by the Granite State News Collaborative.
Stacy Z, a 65-year-old New Hampshire resident, faced an unstable housing situation at the end of 2025.
She had a month to find rent-subsidized housing. Stacy reached out to social service agencies and filled out more than 50 housing applications. On top of her housing search, Stacy was also using a cane while she waited for a hip replacement.
“I used every social service-related resource that I could find to try to find an alternative to becoming homeless, and I felt like a hamster on a wheel,” said Stacy — who asked that her full name not be used over concerns that it could hurt her job prospects. “I was running as fast as I could, and getting nowhere. People were really nice, but what I kept hearing over and over again was, ‘We can't help you.’”
When an accessible room at Hundred Nights — a shelter for unhoused people in Keene — became available, Stacy moved in for three months before she was able to secure a spot at a rent-subsidized property.
While at Hundred Nights, Stacy decided that, once she resolved her own situation, she wanted to advocate for others experiencing homelessness.
“My life has been very geared towards serving others, and I certainly never expected to find myself in this situation,” Stacy said. She works as a drug and alcohol counselor and an interfaith minister.
In recent years, shelters across the state say they’re getting more frequent calls from older adults with medical and mobility issues, who find themselves facing homelessness for the first time.
“We've certainly seen the face of homelessness is changing, and increasingly this is seniors who worked their entire lives, paid taxes, raised their families in communities across the region, and really never imagined that they would struggle to afford housing and retirement,” says Kara Anne Rodenhizer, executive director of the Home for All Coalition, a partnership of individuals and organizations working on housing solutions along the Seacoast.
“What we're seeing, and what many of our partners are seeing, is that for most of these folks, homelessness is not the result of what folks might think as a personal failure or poor decision,” Rodenhizer said. “It's really that housing costs are rising so much faster, and on fixed incomes that poses a lot of challenges.”
Ineffective safety net
It’s not a new phenomenon. A few years ago, when the NH Coalition to End Homelessness hosted roundtables across the state with homeless service providers and local residents, a concern at every conversation involved older adults facing homelessness, says Jennifer Chisholm, executive director of the coalition.
In fact, of the 2,245 people identified as experiencing homelessness during New Hampshire’s 2024 Point in Time count, 442 were adults age 55 and older, according to the coalition’s annual report. Nearly a quarter of all individuals experiencing homelessness for the first time in 2024 were older adults.
“I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that statistic, because I think we think as Americans that we have this really great safety net that takes care of our seniors,” Chisholm said. “But it's not working as effectively as it really should be, clearly, given just the economy, rental economy, housing economy, and how wages and also fixed incomes for our seniors just aren't keeping up with the true prices of everything.”
Nationally, people age 50 or older are the fastest-growing group experiencing homelessness in America, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
The number of older adults facing homelessness has increased since the COVID pandemic, said Sue Ford, executive director of My Friend’s Place, an independent living shelter in Dover. Others working in the field echo her.
“I started in this work about eight years ago, and over that time I've definitely seen an increase in not only our older population — say 50 and up — that tends to be the majority of folks that I have in our population right now. I also see a lot more folks 18 to 25, which I also think is really interesting. It's these two populations, both with some really individual considerations,” said Erik Becker, housing stability director at the Berlin-based Tri-County Community Action Program.
Factors pushing older adults into homelessness include financial crises, losing their independence, death of a spouse or caretaker, or a medical crisis, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
“It's not necessarily things that wouldn't impact younger people, but just the impact tends to be heightened due to people's age and, again, the fixed-income piece of things,” Chisholm says.
Over half of all older adult households in the Granite State have to pay more than 30% of their income for their housing costs, according to the coalition’s 2025 report.
The third-oldest state
At Cross Roads House in Portsmouth, Tammy Whalen, director of housing success, and her team work with aging adults who aren’t able to use a top bunk at the shelter. Her team now spends more time on care coordination with medical providers to help aging adults than just a few years ago.
“We desperately need medical respite, so definitely advocating for medical respite in New Hampshire is a big, important piece and then that way we have folks not going back and forth to the hospital, but can have their medical needs met in a facility,” Whalen said.
New Hampshire has no medical respite program, leaving a gap in services for people who aren’t sick enough to be in the hospital but need more care than they can get in the shelter. Without medical respite, shelters and hospitals are in tough positions to decide how best to care for aging adults, Chisholm said.
Across the state, advocates and direct service providers are adjusting to meeting the needs of an aging population. For instance, Manchester has shifted one of its shelters to focus specifically on the aging and infirm because of the need, Chisholm says.
Eve Toth, manager of street outreach and housing stabilization at Communication Action Partnership Belknap-Merrimack Counties, and her team are doing more to serve older adults. For instance, they’re conducting outreach more at park-and-rides and libraries, and supplying more adult diapers.
Since New Hampshire is the third-oldest state in the country, behind Maine and Vermont, advocates expect that older adults will continue to face homelessness.
“This is not a right-now problem,” Rodenhizer says. “This is going to be a problem that I think we're going to see continuing to grow and increase. and it really requires not just investment but collaboration. You don't have to be an aging adult to really see the impact it can have and the strain on emergency services and providers. We’ve got to, as a state, work together to come up with a solution.”
Explaining the need
Less than a year after living at Hundred Nights for a few months, Stacy Z., a graduate of the NH Coalition to End Homelessness advocacy and leadership program, is again gearing her life toward service, using her experiences to explain the need for more affordable housing across the state.
“At a time in my life when a lot of seniors like me would like to be really comfortable and relatively stress-free and not facing these sorts of situations, that's the reality of living in New Hampshire right now,” she says.
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.