When Our Elders Have No Home
September 23, 2025
On any given night in America, more than 771,000 people are homeless. Of that number, over 140,000 are seniors aged 55 and older — a group that is expected to nearly triple by the end of this decade.
Behind the statistics are grandparents who spent decades raising children and working steady jobs. They are elders who poured their wisdom and generosity into churches, neighborhoods, and communities. And they are veterans who once wore the uniform and risked their lives for freedom — all now facing their later years without the security of a home.
Here in Tennessee, the crisis is close at hand. In 2023, an estimated 9,215 Tennesseans were homeless on a given night. Among them were at least 759 people aged 55 or older. That means nearly one in ten homeless persons in our state is an elder — someone’s parent, someone’s grandparent, someone’s neighbor who can no longer bear the weight of rising rents, rising health costs, on fixed incomes.
The stories behind these numbers are heartbreaking. In Nashville, some older adults leave hospitals with nowhere safe to go and end up in shelters not designed for people with walkers, oxygen tanks, or fragile health. In Knoxville, senior-serving ministries report a steady rise in calls from elders who never expected to face eviction in their seventies. In rural towns, older neighbors often suffer in silence, moving from couch to couch or living in cars when family resources run dry. The geography changes, but the pain does not. Tennessee’s elders are aging into poverty, and poverty is too often aging into homelessness.
The obligation of the church is pretty clear. “Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent” (Psalm 71:9). When our elders are left to wander the streets, it is not only a social failure — it is a spiritual one. Jesus Himself said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” In today’s Tennessee, that stranger often has gray hair, a cane, and a life story full of service and sacrifice.
For congregations, this calling begins with presence. We must make space for the elderly poor not as projects, but as people — people whose dignity reflects the image of God. Our presence might look like opening fellowship halls as warming centers, volunteering at transitional housing sites, or sitting beside elders who have no family left to check on them. Presence is not complicated, but it is costly, requiring our time, our listening, and our willingness to be interrupted by the needs of another.
We must also honor those already laboring on the frontlines: nurses who provide care in under-resourced clinics, social workers who navigate complex systems on behalf of vulnerable elders, and administrators who keep shelters and programs running despite limited budgets. Across Tennessee, organizations like the Village at Glencliff in Nashville or Catholic Charities’ senior programs in Knoxville already extend lifelines to aging adults without homes. In East Tennessee, grassroots ministries provide food, blankets, and crisis assistance to elders who have fallen through every other safety net. These ministries are faithful witnesses in hard places.
The question for the church is not whether to join them, but how. How can we support them, encourage them, and expand their reach? Sometimes the answer is financial, sometimes relational, sometimes prophetic. The point is not to replace their work, but to stand beside them — strengthening their hands, amplifying their witness, and reminding the state and the world that caring for the aged poor is a holy calling.
And let us not forget prevention. Churches can walk with older adults before crisis arrives — offering help with groceries, rides to medical appointments, or assistance with minor home repairs that keep a house livable. We can build intergenerational friendships that fight the loneliness so many elders endure. We can teach our children that caring for the elderly is not charity but discipleship, a way of following Jesus who honors the least and the last.
Because when the church rises to embrace the elders among us, we do more than meet a social need. We live into the gospel itself — a gospel that promises God’s presence in every season of life, and a kingdom where no one is forgotten in their old age. And perhaps, if we are faithful, the day will come when the phrase “homeless elder” has no place in Tennessee’s vocabulary, because the people of God stood up and said: not on our watch.
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