Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series — Aging on the Streets — on senior homelessness in San Luis Obispo County, reported through a fellowship from the USC Annenberg School of Health Journalism.
On a cool April morning in San Luis Obispo, Brett Cross and his dog set out for their regular bike ride and run around nearby Laguna Lake.
Cross, a lifelong resident of San Luis Obispo, said it was common to encounter the homeless residents who often park their vehicles or camp there overnight, but during that month, he began to notice a woman sleeping on the trail with her belongings.
It became part of his daily routine to say hello to the woman, though she was rarely social, Cross said, leading him to start a Nextdoor thread with other neighbors to try to identify her and get her connected to some form of assistance.
Cross made several attempts through San Luis Obispo’s AskSLO app to have Social Services check on the woman, but she remained on the trail through the start of spring, braving cold overnight temperatures without any shelter save for the clothes on her back, her sleeping bag and the assorted possessions she hauled in a pair of shopping carts.
Though she never said much and largely kept to herself, Cross eventually realized he had been riding past 63-year-old Sheryl Glidden, who was not only a fellow lifetime San Luis Obispo resident like himself, but also a former classmate of Cross’ at San Luis Obispo High School.
“That’s somebody who I probably had contact with in high school — she was couple years in front of me, but who was that?” Cross said. “I was on the phone with my buddy looking for pictures (in yearbooks) trying to figure if we knew her.”
Then, on the morning of April 30, Cross discovered Glidden lying on the trail in clear distress, unable to speak and “extremely cold to the touch.” After Cross called 911, Glidden was transported to a hospital and became unresponsive.
Her temperature was noted at 32.6 degrees Celsius — 90.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Glidden died later that day from complications related to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. She also was suffering from Addison’s disease — a rare adrenal insufficiency — and a lice infestation at the time of death, according to county sheriff-coroner reports.
Glidden had also struggled with fibromyalgia, Lyme disease and schizophrenia, an autopsy found.
Several other homeless residents who park or camp in the Laguna Lake area said they had limited contact with Glidden, who kept to herself and could be outwardly antisocial.
Cross said that since Glidden’s death, he’s felt a mix of anger, frustration and disappointment about the way his hometown has failed to house and care for its own lifelong residents who have found themselves in the same vulnerable position as Glidden.
“How do you wrap your head around that? How did that happen? How does so much go wrong?” Cross said.
Older adults make up a significant share of homeless population post-pandemic
Glidden’s story may seem surprising in a small, tight-knit town like San Luis Obispo, but it’s merely one local example of a larger trend.
In fact, senior and older adult homelessness is among the fastest-growing demographics within the unhoused population in California, and SLO County is no exception.
Glidden was one of at least 339 homeless people over the age of 55 living without shelter recorded in San Luis Obispo County’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count — a number that has been on the rise across California in recent years.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, SLO County service providers have warned of a “silver tsunami” of older individuals seeking more services than ever before as the state’s high cost of living and other factors combine to push people with little or no income out of housing and onto the streets.
Between the 2019 and 2022 Point-in-Time Counts, the share of individuals between the ages of 51 and 60 experiencing homelessness grew from 15% to 26% of the total, while the share of people 61 and older jumped from 8% to 18%, meaning people over the age of 51 accounted for around 44% of the county’s homeless population.
Though the 2024 count used slightly different age ranges when categorizing homelessness — 45-54, 55-64 and 65 or over — people 55 and over made up around a third of San Luis Obispo County’s homeless population, with 239 between the ages of 55 and 64 and 100 over the age of 65.
Seniors are more likely to suffer adverse health impacts from living without shelter than any other homeless population, and the tumultuous post-pandemic years have not made the issue any easier to manage.
In this three-part series, The Tribune examined why homelessness has grown among San Luis Obispo County’s senior population, how seniors’ health fares while they’re homeless and what’s being done to get seniors off the streets and into stable shelter.
To report this public health story, The Tribune partnered with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Health Journalism’s Lori Yearwood Fund for Reporting on Homelessness, which provides money for reporters to pursue a health topic of their choosing.
Tribune reporter Joan Lynch spent six months working on the project, conducting six focus groups and interviewing more than 20 currently homeless San Luis Obispo County residents over the age of 50 to understand the cause of — and solutions to — health inequities experienced by homeless seniors.
She also spoke with service providers and experts on homelessness about how best to help this particularly vulnerable population, some of whom have lived on the Central Coast their entire lives.
Why do people become homeless in San Luis Obispo County?
Like an increasing number of lifelong older residents of San Luis Obispo County, Glidden found herself homeless about four years ago, police records show.
According to one of her final posts to her Facebook page in October 2020, she was actively searching for a place to stay when she became homeless.
In that time, law enforcement and outreach services contacted Glidden more than 20 times, largely due to trespassing, with the Police Department’s Community Action Team and the Fire Department’s Mobile Crisis Unit making contact with her as recently as April 26, according to police records.
Glidden’s repeated unwillingness to engage with service providers may have been for a number of reasons but was a common theme among focus group participants, many of whom told The Tribune they don’t trust homeless service providers or the shelter system — as a matter of principle or because of repeated negative interactions with providers.
The exact reason Glidden lost her housing is unknown. The Tribune repeatedly attempted to contact next of kin but was unable to establish why Glidden ended up on the streets.
However, respondents in The Tribune’s focus groups commonly listed loss of a job, eviction, having a poor rental history and, most commonly, the rising cost of living as their main reason for losing housing.
If they don’t have enough income, their options for safe housing are limited.
San Luis Obispo County has a total of around 900 beds reserved for people over the age of 55, between its independent and assisted living communities, nursing homes, memory care facilities and affordable housing, but in a given week, only a handful are open, SLG Senior Care senior placement specialist Sue Gibson told The Tribune.
Gibson said affordable, deed-restricted housing for seniors simply does not get built quickly enough to meet the growing demand in the region. Waiting lists for the few age-restricted affordable housing developments are long, Gibson said, and many new projects of this kind hit the market already booked.
Austin Solheim, director of operations and development at the El Camino Homeless Organization in Atascadero, said the post-pandemic years have been particularly difficult for many seniors.
While the rise in housing costs hurts all renters in the county and has caused a bump in homelessness in general, its effects on the senior population have been more profound, Solheim said.
“We have kind of seen a progression of more seniors and more people in an older age range having to use our services than before,” Solheim said. “Specifically, we’re seeing a lot of seniors that have been pushed out of where they were renting.”
According to the 2024 Point-in-Time Count, 125 of 152 unsheltered people over 55 who answered the county’s questions on their needs listed housing as their top service need, followed by transportation, documentation storage and legal assistance.
That data also showed that individuals struggling with homelessness are more likely than their counterparts in the general population to suffer from conditions such as a substance abuse disorder, disability and sexual violence.
Further analysis showed that older people in San Luis Obispo County are at an elevated risk of homelessness when compared to other groups, though they do not make up the largest proportion of homeless individuals in the county.
Is living in SLO County long-term still attainable for low-income seniors?
In San Luis Obispo County, housing is priced at a premium unattainable to many people — and seniors are no exception.
Focus group participants reported incomes ranging as high as $2,000 a month from jobs, Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income and General Assistance, though most reported their monthly incomes fell somewhere between $500 and $1,200.
At best, that adds up to an annual income of $24,000.
At worst, it’s a mere $6,000.
Compare that to San Luis Obispo County’s median household income, which was just over $90,000 in 2024, according to U.S. Census data.
Against San Luis Obispo County’s high rents, which routinely clear $2,000 a month for studio and one-bedroom apartments, those totals are simply not enough money to afford housing, much less have enough left over for food, clothing and other essentials.
In addition, many seniors on fixed incomes are not in a stable enough environment to re-enter the workforce while experiencing homelessness and realistically will need some form of support, be that housing, financial aid or other services, Solheim said.
In many cases, these are people like Sheryl Glidden who have spent their entire lives here. They are longtime community members, friends and neighbors, parents and grandparents.
Of the 20 focus group participants interviewed by The Tribune, 12 said they were born in San Luis Obispo County and became homeless here; only one participant said they were born outside of California.
That was largely in line with the survey results from the 2024 homeless count, which found that 117 of the 152 unsheltered respondents over 55 have lived in San Luis Obispo County for more than five years, with 19 reporting living in the county between one and five years, three living here between 90 days and one year, three between a month and 90 days and just four living in SLO County for less than one month. Six did not specify how long they’d lived here.
According to the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo’s 2023 needs assessment, San Luis Obispo County’s senior homeless population is slightly more top-heavy than the rest of California, with 13.5% falling between the ages of 55 and 64 and 20.2% over the age of 65.
By comparison, 12.5% of California residents are between the ages of 55 and 64, while 15.8% are over the age of 65.
Limited number of beds and high prices
Even seniors who do have more resources face a shortage of housing options in their later years and may not be able to afford staying in such a pricey place.
Spring Angelotti, a community relations coordinator at independent and assisted facility The Villages of San Luis Obispo, said that data suggests that living in San Luis Obispo County from birth to death is simply no longer a viable strategy for many people who have lived and worked here all their lives.
Angelotti said a month’s stay at The Villages, which has a minimum age requirement of 55, can run a client between $4,000 on the low end and $7,000 at the high end, depending on what services a client needs.
She said open apartments don’t last long and tend to go to people with the means to move in as soon as possible.
Angelotti estimated that she has to turn away around 35% of all requests for rooms she receives solely because the client’s income is insufficient.
Gibson, with SLG Senior Care, said she’s seen a similar problem.
“It’s only gotten worse since I arrived here,” Gibson said. “It was still already challenging when it was $3,500 a month for a shared room. That was already above the $1,200 which was the Social Security most people are getting, so we already had a gap, and now the gap is $1,200 against $5,000.”
As senior-specific housing goes, The Villages is on the less expensive end, Gibson said.
In her four years helping seniors plan out their housing in San Luis Obispo County, Gibson said she’s seen very little new development in senior-specific independent homes, assisted living or memory care.
That recent elevation in prices means that even seniors who own housing and are looking to downsize may not be able to stretch the money from selling their home as far, Gibson said.
Gibson said not unlike San Luis Obispo County’s housing market, the local senior living industry has become less attainable to people who live and work in the county, due to competition from wealthier people living in the area looking to place their older relatives into senior housing.
Those factors have led Gibson to advise most lower-income seniors struggling with cost of living to move out of the county or in with relatives, as their chances in the rental and senior housing markets are slim.
And if they can’t or won’t do that, what happens?
“There’s no place to send them,” Angelotti said. “There’s nothing to refer them to — there is nothing. There is one low-income senior building in San Luis Obispo, and it had I’m not sure it’s ever had an opening.”
Coming tomorrow: How being homeless in SLO County pushes seniors to the brink.
