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.
Most of us use Google, Microsoft and Amazon. They’re ingrained and destroying our futures but they’re convenient. Two generations from now will be saying the same about us. We as individuals can resist, but it won’t make a trillion dollar company into a million dollar company. We eat the rich, none of this generation hate.