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American elderly retirees suffer more than any segment of the population from the financial downturn. (Google) |
WASHINGTON — Felipe Arruabarrena always thought that when it’s time for him to quit work, he will spend his golden years of retirement in well earned ease. He never imagined that a turmoil on Wall Street will hit him hard to end up a homeless in a shelter house.
"I don't have an apartment,” the 68-year-old, who lives in a homeless shelter in Miami, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, March 1.
“Now they are helping me find something I can afford with my reduced income."
He is not alone.
American elderly retirees suffer more than any segment of the population from the financial downturn.
The threat of a foreclosure notice being served for unpaid dues and the ensuing homelessness has become a real prospect for thousands of retirees.
In Miami, home to the US' largest population of retirees, area foreclosures have more than doubled last year.
Some 26,691 families of retirees have lost their homes in 2007 versus 56,656 in 2008, according to Dade Country figures.
Valerie Williams, an older Jamaican who took up US nationality in 1994, said she built a house in Tampa but is on the verge of loosing it through foreclosure.
"Truthfully, this has shot my confidence,” he lamented.
“[I] always believed that if you worked hard, you could earn a house in this country."
According to a study by World famed auditors Ernst and Young, nearly two thirds of US retirees will run out of savings before they die due to the economic downturn.
The US fell into the grip of the worst economic crisis since 1930s in September after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank, and the financial woes of a number of Wall Street giants.
The fallout has developed into a full-fledged recession, threatening personal finances as home prices fall, retirement funds shrink and access to credit and jobs evaporate.
Preys
Experts say that there were multiple reasons for the number of old people that are now looking for help.
"Unfortunately many of the older citizens did not understand the terms of the loans that they took out,” Carolina Lombardi, a senior housing attorney at Legal Services for Greater Miami, told AFP.
“[They] did not understand that they were adjustable, that they were negative amortization, that the amount on payment did not include the payment for taxes and insurance.”
Lombardi asserts that many elderly fell preys to predatory lending by some brokers.
"Some of the elderly were tricked into finding mortgages that they could have never qualified."
Betty Kellogs agrees that there is “a lot of the preying on the elderly.”
The 70-year-old, who has a house in Sarasota, a short distance from Fort Myers -- one the of the areas with the largest number of foreclosures in the US, is not one of those who lost their homes, just not yet.
"The banks and the mortgage companies just don't care about us."
According to a recent survey by the AARP, a huge US lobbying and interest group for people over 50, at least seven in 10 Americans older than 45 now expect they will have to work beyond 65, the usual age of retirement.
Currently some 16 percent of Americans older than 65 are working, compared with 12 percent at the end of the 1990s, according to the US Department of Labor.
For Kellogs, who is recovering from breast cancer and still in poor health, since working is not an option, she hold outs little hope to get any help.
"I'm just trying to hold my head above water,” she says desperately.
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