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“No Place to Grow Old,” a cri de cœur on behalf of society’s most vulnerable members, was screened Thursday night at Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Staunton. For all the ears, eyes and hearts it reached, it may as well have been screamed into a well or from a wind-whipped cliff. No more than a score of people showed up, at least half of whom already work locally with the homeless—which is to say, this was a gospel being preached to the already converted.
What a sadly lost opportunity that was.
“No Place to Grow Old,” although filmed in Portland, has been shown hundreds of times across the U.S. in school auditoriums, church basements, service organization halls—wherever a handful of people touched by its portrayal can cobble together a screening. The story it tells is not particular to Oregon but is replicated in one community after another, including ours. Its main protagonists are uniquely distinctive voices that nevertheless describe an increasingly universal experience, providing an unflinching look at the stark realities of being old and homeless in a society that prefers not to see its failures in such raw close-up.
The biggest difference in homelessness between Portland and Staunton? The tents in Portland are right out there on the sidewalks. Here they’re hidden away, tucked into overgrown lots behind shopping centers, allowing us to maintain the fiction that this really isn’t that big a problem.
To dispel that myth, here are some of the numbers that came out of the after-movie panel discussion on Thursday. Within the SAW region of Staunton, Augusta County and Waynesboro, at least 250 homeless people have been counted in the annual census known as the Point in Time (PIT) count, and the people doing the counting agree this is an undercount. Three years ago, Valley Supportive Housing—which provides subsidized housing to local residents with a mental illness, intellectual disability or substance abuse issues—had a waiting list of 15 to 20. Today, that list has grown to 107.
Valley Mission, the only local emergency shelter for the general population, served 649 people in 2016 but only 247 in 2025—not because demand has gone down, but because of a sharp decrease in local affordable housing for people in the shelter to move into, which means the shelter’s revolving door is turning more and more slowly, and fewer people who need it can get in. The Mission, too, has a waiting list, of approximately 100. Ironically, 20 of the homeless shelter’s clients are earning a paycheck but can’t find an apartment they can afford, contributing to the logjam.
While Valley Supportive Housing historically has served people who are psychologically or mentally fragile, both that population and the homeless generally become even more vulnerable as they get older. People who are already homeless age much more rapidly than their housed counterparts, with people in their 50s having the bodies of someone 20 or more years older. Roughly 35% of the Mission’s residents are at least 55, and with each passing year that percentage grows. Meanwhile, the number of freshly minted homeless old people also is growing, as people who managed to keep a roof over their heads for most of their lives get squeezed out of their homes by rising rents, illness, or other life circumstances that outstrip their reserves.
Nationally, single adults over 50 now make up half of the homeless population.
In crude economic terms, this is a huge social burden. Valley Supportive Housing, for example, reports that its residents have one-third the annual number of psychiatric crises they had suffered before getting into a home, resulting in far fewer emergency room visits—at more than $2,200 a pop—arrests or mental hospital commitments. With jail costs of $120 a day and a single day at a mental hospital coming in at $700, the savings in taxpayer dollars due to the organization’s activities run into six and seven figures.
But those are just numbers, and while data are important to understand the full extent of a problem, it’s the personal stories told in “No Room to Grow Old” that give it depth and emotional resonance. These are people who have or had parents and children, who held responsible jobs and looked after other people, who had and have dreams and passions and fears. They’re not lazy or parasites or too stupid to do better. They’re people who may have been your neighbors or the clerk who helped you at a store down the street or a local handyman or groundskeeper, but who, through a turn of bad luck—a divorce, a death in the family, a broken hip—have been ejected from one life and into another, much less privileged one.
The problem with listening to these stories and to looking into the eyes of those who tell them is that once you’ve done that, it’s so much harder to carry on with your normal life without doing something in response. Some things are hard to unsee—and shouldn’t be. But that’s exactly why “No Place to Grow Old” should be seen more widely, and especially by those who might be able to do something in response: our city council members, who establish the city’s priorities. City planners and managers who will be preparing the next municipal budget. The members of our newly formed housing commission, who are charged with planning for the city’s housing needs. Planning board commissioners and members of the Economic Development Authority and the guiding lights behind the heretofore mute Valley Program for Aging Services.
Local clergy, who should be thundering about the least among us from their pulpits.
All these people, as well as the public at large, do have one more—but just one more—chance to see this film, which will be shown next Sunday (Oct. 25) at 3 p.m. in the fellowship hall of Central United Methodist Church, also in downtown Staunton. Come and bear witness.
The “No Place to Grow Old” trailer can be seen here.
