We Don’t Have Time to Wait Politely

This week I was reading through a stack of my old blog posts from the past 10 years or so, and something uncomfortable started to surface: I keep writing versions of the same warning. Waiting lists for elder housing that now run two to ten years. Elections that came and went while underlying problems festered. Threats to Social Security and Medicare that get tied up in committees. Healthcare prices set by insurance monopolies who decide who gets what when.

I don’t think this is a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s just me. When I read pieces like these back-to-back, a pattern jumps out that isn’t visible in any single post: we are very good at documenting problems and remarkably slow at implementing solutions. We hold hearings. We write op-eds. We wait for promises to be kept, and then we listen to excuses why they weren’t. Meanwhile the people affected by all this waiting are, disproportionately, old.  People like me.

Be Here Now!

Our institutions run on a timeline built for people who assume they have an endless future. Insurance companies negotiate a “reasonable” implementation delay. Housing authorities maintain waitlists as though the people on them are static entries in a spreadsheet rather than actual bodies aging in real time.  The waiting “rooms” more and more frequently include their cars, subsidized housing with no guarantee that rents will be manageable, and hospital beds with nowhere discharge-ready to go.

Here is the thing about aging that Millennial or Gen-Z systems designers rarely account for: time does not feel the same to those of us 70 and older as it does to a 30-year-old anxious about turning 30.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

When you are 68 or 78, are on limited income and have multiple chronic illnesses, a five-year wait for a housing voucher is not an inconvenience to be managed. A one-year delay in Medicare covering a medication you need is not a rounding error. It is a year you may not have to spare.

Urgency is not a personality trait some of us have and others lack. It is an inevitable fact of the calendar, and it lands hardest on people whose sands through the hourglass are running out more quickly.

The Process Alone Doesn’t Guarantee Security

In reading one of my old blogs, I was reminded of a woman I had worked with who had been a professional at one time, who had raised a family, gotten divorced, and then succumbed to alcoholism and depression.  She was 68 years old, intelligent, resourceful, and proud.  Her circumstances had changed dramatically, and when I first saw her, she was living in her truck. 

We worked together and got her on a waiting list for housing.  At that time there were a total of 103 units dedicated to aging adults in my small community.  The waitlist was between two and ten years.      

Over the next several months, we spent more than one session working with the feelings of hopelessness, shame, marginalization, and anger that her homelessness brought up.  Remarkably, she continued to stay clean and sober, and her life began to take on some regularity.  While she was still without housing, the frequency of our sessions went down because she was feeling better about herself and was better able to take care of herself.  She still lived out of her truck, but she found safe places to park, got a seasonal job at the County Regional Park, and felt productive again.

It had been several months since I had seen her, but one day I saw her name on my schedule.  I was concerned because while she had been doing well, she was still vulnerable.  She came into my office with a huge smile on her face and a beautiful potted plant.  She said, “I’m just here to say thank you and to let you know I finally have a place to live!”  She was so excited.  We talked about things like decorating, having people over, having a place to cook and do laundry.  We talked just like normal people.  Just like normal people.

It is my belief that providing housing is possibly the most potent intervention we can provide.  In the long run, it is cheaper than all the medications on the market, and more effective than anything Freud or Jung could have done.  All it takes is commitment from a community to take care of its own.

Ageism is Getting More Visible

When we design housing policy, drug pricing policy, or healthcare enrollment periods on a calendar that assumes everyone has time to spare, we are quietly making a decision about whose lives are worth the delay and whose aren’t. We rarely say it that plainly, but the actuarial tables know.

This is where ageism does its inexorable erosion of hope. It is not merely the unkind comment about someone being “too old” for a job or a joke about forgetfulness. It is an unchallenged belief baked into the pace at which we are willing to solve problems that predominantly affect older adults.

We tolerate a two-to-ten-year waitlist for housing because the people waiting are mostly older, largely poor, and frankly invisible in the rooms where these timelines get set.  They are just going to die anyway.

I want to be careful here, because I am not writing this to induce despair. I have lived long enough to know that despair is not a winning strategy. I have seen change happen. Maybe not quickly and not without cost. But it has happened, and it can happen again. It happens when enough people decide the waiting has gone on long enough.

It Takes Time and Effort

The civil rights movement took purposeful commitment, courage, and sacrifice. Social Security evolved, and its goals and aspirations were handed down from generation to generation of leaders before enactment. These changes would not have happened without people who had run out of patience. People who “eventually” organized themselves and then persisted in seeing the change materialize.

I admit, these efforts took decades. But during those decades, constant pressure was applied to change things.

Urgency, not Patience!

So, what does urgency actually look like for those of us paying attention to aging in America? It looks like calling your council member or supervisor and demanding they put elder housing policy on their agenda. It looks like showing up at a city council or county supervisors meeting, even though the meeting is at an inconvenient hour and the room will be nearly empty.  

It looks like calling your representative’s office about Medicare drug coverage and Medicare Advantage limitations instead of just grumbling about the commercials (though I understand the appeal of grumbling).

It looks like brainstorming and coming up with out-of-the-box ideas to repurpose buildings that are standing empty because of the economy or drop in population, into intergenerational shared housing that benefits the whole community. 

It looks like rewriting zoning laws to allow for co-housing projects and tiny house pilots.  It looks like keeping wealth local by financing housing projects jointly through community land trusts, philanthropic organizations, and government loans.

It looks like refusing to let “that’s just how long it takes” pass unchallenged in conversations where you have some standing to challenge it.

Changing Our Mindset

There’s a particular kind of pressure on older adults to be patient, to not make waves, to be grateful for whatever crumbs of attention we get. I have watched this pressure work on people I respect enormously, people who have every right to be furious about a ten-year waitlist and instead apologize for taking up space on it. We do not owe anyone that gratitude. Wanting things to move faster when you are the one running out of runway is not entitlement. It is an accurate read of your own situation.

Urgency Is Not Impolite

I don’t have a tidy solution to offer at the end of this blog, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims they do. What I have is a request, mostly to myself, and by extension to anyone reading who shares my particular vantage point of being old enough to feel the clock and experienced enough to know how these systems actually work.

Stop treating the urgency as impolite. Say the quiet part out loud: some of us do not have ten years to wait, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of harm. The clock was ticking in that woman’s truck. The question was never whether time is short. It always is, for everyone. The real question is whether we are willing to act like we know that before the waiting list catches up with us.