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.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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@lemm.ee
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        1 year 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
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          1 year 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
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            1 year 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