Aging

Reporter Vicki Gonzalez spent the past year on this series as a recipient of the 2018 California Fellowship with USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
 

He used to sleep in a bed. In a home. That was until Hurricane Harvey struck, when the 70-year-old lost his home and almost everything he owned.

Joy and Ben Langford know how difficult it is for a young family to afford a home in Monterey County. They rented for several years as they had three children. At the same time, Ben’s parents wanted to downsize and relocate from Texas to California to be closer to them, but they couldn't afford it.

Like most of us, Doris Beckman, 67, had a plan for how life was going to go. But real life has a way of interrupting the imagined one.
 

"Only until people really realize there are 70 – and 80-year-old women living in their cars will we as a society be forced to change,” one local nonprofit leader says.

Last Tuesday, nearly 100 people gathered in Jackson to connect with their neighbors around a troubling statistic: Amador County has the third-highest suicide rate in California.

Joshua’s House in Sacramento, California is slated to become the first homeless hospice center in the West Coast and one of only a handful in the country.

The cost of aging in America is outrageous, as journalist Andrew Lam's family has come to learn. And the costs aren't just financial — caring for aging family members requires tremendous human capital as well.

California is facing a gray tide. And the state’s fragile long-term care infrastructure is ill-prepared for the coming surge in demand. What can be done?

Poor people, people in isolated, rural areas and minorities are least likely to receive palliative care and counseling about end-of-life decisions. And one-third of U.S. hospitals don’t have a palliative care team.