{"id":304658,"date":"2017-04-22T13:45:37","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T12:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-surge-in-minnesota-of-homeless-elderly\/"},"modified":"2017-04-22T13:45:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T12:45:37","slug":"a-surge-in-minnesota-of-homeless-elderly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-surge-in-minnesota-of-homeless-elderly\/","title":{"rendered":"A surge in Minnesota of homeless elderly"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>A surge in Minnesota of homeless elderly<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Gary Joad<br \/>\n    <br \/>22 April 2017<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>According to interviews broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio earlier this month, \u201calarm bells are going off around the state,\u201d over the surge of older persons entering homeless shelters both in the urban and rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>Sue Koesterman, pastor and executive director of Churches United for the Homeless shelter in Moorhead, Minnesota told MPR\u2019s Dan Gunderson, \u201cI think we are beginning to see the wave. It offends me as a pastor that someone who is at end of life should have to receive hospice care (for example) in a dorm of a homeless shelter. To me, that\u2019s just offensive to my sense of human dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Persons over the age of 55 are the smallest grouping of homeless in the state. However, across Minnesota, older people are the fastest growing demographic without a permanent address, according to the Wilder Foundation which has been performing a \u201cpoint-in-time\u201d one day counting of homeless people every 3 years since 1991.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Wilder Foundation\u2019s 2015 report, the number of Minnesota\u2019s homeless persons 55 to 80 years old has increased by 45 percent since the last survey done in 2012. The latest single day survey counted 9,312 adults, youth, and children without a permanent address, including 843 over the age of 55, comprising 9 percent of the homeless population in Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>Koesterman told MPR that, absent a political commitment to reverse the trend, matters are going to get much worse. Minnesota\u2019s Republican controlled legislature, in its most recent session, did not even give a hearing to a proposal to allow financing for affordable senior housing. The Trump administration has unmistakably signaled its intention to abolish grants for the funding of lower cost housing for&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2017\/04\/22\/minn-a22.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 A surge in Minnesota of homeless elderly By Gary Joad 22 April 2017 According to interviews broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio earlier this month, \u201calarm bells are going off around the state,\u201d over the surge of older persons entering homeless shelters both in the urban and rural areas. Sue Koesterman, pastor and executive director [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-304658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}