A few decades ago, Leslie McIntire thought she was doing everything right for a comfortable life. She was a tax accountant in Washington, D.C., and co-owned a not-for-profit bookstore. “I had good savings,” she says. “I was quite happy, quite frankly, and I was preparing to go back to school.”

Then a car accident dislocated her hip and jaw, left her psychologically rattled and derailed her career.

McIntire held on in her rent-controlled apartment for a while, even after she was forced to go on disability and started burning through savings. She eventually realized she needed more help, but then had to endure a three-year wait to get into the federally subsidized senior housing where she now lives.

“And by the time I got in here, I was seriously considering going into a shelter,” she says. “I paid my rent, my utilities. I had SNAP benefits for food. And I had $25 left over. And you just can’t live on that in the long run.”

McIntire is 69, part of the baby boomer generation that is entering older age amid a historic affordable housing shortage and rising wealth inequality in the U.S.

  • TimewornTraveler
    345·
    11 months ago

    fuck off, my mom didn’t gut your social programs. she’s human just like you and me, raised three kids as a single mother working long hours, and now she cant afford her rent either. we’re all in the same pot of shit and your contempt for an entire generation based on a few rich assholes who face zero consequences is just tone deaf and cruel

    • ganksy@lemmy.world
      62·
      11 months ago

      The few rich assholes only have power and zero consequences because they were supported. My dad supports those aholes and will get what they promised him. My mom has never voted for them and she will too, unfortunately. Who is worse the grifting manipulators or their enablers?

        • ganksy@lemmy.world
          11·
          11 months ago

          More of a clarification. Did your mom reap what she sowed? My dad did. I’m not mad at anyone for pointing that out. Neither am I assuming anyone is condemning my mom for being a boomer even though she didn’t vote for this stuff.

    • teft@startrek.website
      914·
      11 months ago

      Maybe she should have voted for people who cared about social safety instead of assholes like Reagan who gutted it.

        • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
          146·
          11 months ago

          To bad majority of boomers didn’t. Face it your mom and my moms generation fuck us All and now they are paying the consequences. It going be far worse for us when we are their age. So no I have no time but to feel contemp for them.

          • SoylentBlake
            62·
            11 months ago

            Buddy, you’re jumping the gun, seriously.

            Boomers have voted for their own interests at the cost of anyone else their entire lives, what makes you think this’ll be different?

            They’ll take all the money social security had left and cancel it for gen x onwards, regardless of us paying into it for 30 years

            • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
              11·
              11 months ago

              Your right but their are boomers like my cunt mom who were poor and didn’t do any of that but still voted for the ones who did.

              • Dkarma@lemmy.world
                22·
                11 months ago

                That makes her post of the problem. No sympathy for people who lived through the greatest economy in history and failed to make it. Then voted for ppl to ruin it for the rest of us