While the adventurous sexual agency of perimenopausal women has recently morphed into a lucrative literary subgenre, the Santa Barbara County Adult & Aging Network has found that the economic challenges facing the county’s increasingly aging population is far more fraught than frisky. According to a 44-page bombshell of a draft report dropped on the county supervisors on Tuesday, people 60 years old or older will make up fully one-quarter of the county’s population by the year 2030.
When it comes to economically accessible housing and home care, the gap between supply and demand for this population has eclipsed the Grand Canyon. Many elderly people fortunate enough to own their properties sold their homes five years ago to cover the cost of care and have since outlived their money.
The median cost of in-home care is $84,500 a year, but most in-home care workers make only $16 to $26 an hour, low enough for many to qualify for public assistance to get by. This, in turn, is responsible for a significant shortage in in-home care workers; the number of applicants for such job postings dropped has dropped 70 percent since 2018. Of those holding these jobs, the report found 80 percent are women, 74 percent are people of color, and 47 percent are immigrants.