Army Veteran Ivory Giles has seen far too much death in his life. He picked up bodies for transport during Desert Storm, then worked in a children’s hospital with cancer patients. The strain of it pushed him to leave pharmaceutical work.
"I couldn't watch the kids pass away like that," he said.
He ended up working as an engineer in his home state of Michigan. But when Covid hit, death began to haunt him once again.
"We were having funerals every other week, you know, of close family member passing or something like that. And it just got to a point where it just became mentally depressive. And I said I didn't want to do it anymore, you know? I felt like I was sitting around waiting for death," he said.
Giles left his home state, sold his house, and ended up in a nomadic lifestyle while working for several years. He worked contracts, living out of hotels. But that led to more instability, and he found himself living at the Sgt. Eugene Ashley Memorial House in Wilmington, North Carolina — transitional housing for homeless veterans.
"Since I've been here, everyone, I mean, these guys are phenomenal, you know? I mean, they give you a sense of belonging, they give you compassion, they give you understanding, and they're totally supportive," he said.
Giles is 60, and has never been homeless before in his life. But he’s not alone in falling into housing instability.
The number of people aged 55 and older who are homeless in the Cape Fear region has gone up nearly 48% since 2022. In 2025, there were 367 people that age experiencing homelessness.
It coincides with a marked increase in homelessness nationally — 2024 is the last year national data is available, and has the dubious honor of being the biggest year for homelessness in the nation’s history. A record 771,000 people were homeless that year, up more than 100,000 from the year prior. And nearly a fifth of them are over the age of 55.
Sally Learned is the Executive Director of the Brunswick Partnership for Housing, a nonprofit that helps provide services for the unhoused. She said things are definitely getting worse.
"We're seeing the increases in elderly [homelessness]. I mean, it is not uncommon for me to get a call from the senior center to say, I've got a 70-year-old woman sleeping in her car in our parking lot," she said.
Learned says this population is especially vulnerable to the elements if they’re unsheltered.
"Well, their health needs increase. Their health deteriorates. They're not getting nutrition. They're battling the heat and the cold, and they will die sooner,” she said.
Seniors have tough challenges — many have health problems or are disabled, and many live on fixed incomes that make it impossible to afford rent and utilities without help. That’s how so many are falling into homelessness for the first time, Learned said.
"They are on very limited income amounts, and it's fixed budgets," she said.
With a maximum SSI monthly payment of $994 for an individual, it's essentially impossible to afford a market-rate apartment.
The elderly do have access to more resources than younger unhoused folks — through Medicaid, they’re insured to access custodial care. And some affordable housing complexes are limited to seniors exclusively.
New Hanover County Adult Protective Services Program Manager Sean Dwyer said those resources are dwindling — fewer homes accept Medicaid, and the growing elderly population means it’s getting more and more competitive. And that’s all assuming the elderly who are at risk of homelessness even want to use them.
"Medicaid kind of uses a lot of your funds to pay a patient's monthly liability to a facility. So when you go into that facility, you basically don't really have any of your own money anymore. You're, I mean, now your needs are being met, but you don't have any of your own money," he said.
Dwyer says that can stop folks who want to keep their pet or their car, and they’ll choose homelessness to keep their freedom. He hopes that residents will make aging plans well in advance, and reach out early if they need help, rather than waiting for a crisis.
"We find people at their lowest level and lowest moment, but it took a long time to get there in a lot of cases, and it's like, gosh, what we could have been stopped along the way," Dwyer said. "But if you don't plan, you're destined to kind of end in a, I think, a place that difficult."
Amber Smith is the Senior Resource Director in New Hanover County, and said while seniors may have more options in some respects, they're extremely limited in others. Many can't work, or they have physical limitations that mean not all housing options would work for them.
"Sometimes we see older adults that may be able to stay in their home, but they physically can't stay in their home because they need home modifications, but they can't afford those home modifications," she said.
For others, the issue is financial — they want to stay in their home, but due to their limited income, they can't afford the taxes anymore.
Smith also thinks the federal government could do more to support this population.
"The Older Americans Act has not been reauthorized," which would help seniors access social and nutritional services, she said. She applauded state and local programs that provide energy and housing assistance. Experts at the National Alliance to End Homelessness have also pointed to other ideas, like providing deep and permanent housing subsidies to impoverished elderly Americans, using incentives to include universal design features in new housing developments, and bundling Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits with housing vouchers.
Learned said housing is the solution.
"How can we do that affordable housing? How can we build the permanent supportive housing units [that include wrap-around services] for people who are very low-income and need case management? That's a lot of the elderly population," she said. "How can we provide those rent subsidies?”
She’d like to see more of those affordable options, especially for the elderly, in every part of the U.S. Experts say that's the best way to fight the spike in homelessness in recent years, which is largely driven by the rising cost of housing.
