Dora Hayes made do her whole life.
She made do as a 7-year-old, learning to cook after her mother died, leaving six children behind.
As a young woman, she sewed her own son’s and daughter’s clothing and tucked the kids in under blankets she quilted.
Her kitchen was filled with the smell of the soft, fragrant bread she baked. Her home was open to her children’s friends and to family who needed a place to light for a bit.
Hayes assembled bombshells during World War II and was a housekeeper. She worked in a tobacco factory and a deli.
But by the mid-’70s, when Hayes was ready to slide into the golden years of retirement, all her work and all of her kindness added up to not much financially.
She was left to make do for the rest of her life with a monthly Social Security check. In 1909, when Hayes was born, the life expectancy of an American woman was about 51 years. But Hayes has lived decades longer, most of them in near poverty.
There was no pension from the years she cleaned other people’s homes in St. Louis, no retirement account waiting when she hung up her white Bettendorf’s supermarket apron for the last time.
When her husband, Frank, retired from a cold-storage company near the St. Louis stockyards, the only benefit he took with him was a burial policy.
Hayes owned no real estate and had no savings when she moved to Denver to be closer to her children and their families in 1975, after Frank died.
“We didn’t have anything to save,” Hayes says. “We weren’t making that much money. We had enough money to pay rent and buy food and the things we needed.”
Like many men and women in the United States who have survived beyond average life expectancy, 95-year-old Hayes hovers at the financial edge, her life made stable by a government old-age pension and other public assistance.
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Photo 1: Photos of Dora Hayes’ large Photo 2: Hayes, left, watches a couple dance to the music Photo 3: Before arthritis got the best of her hands, Hayes loved to quilt, including the Broken Star-pattern quilt that covers her bed. She still cooks for herself and bakes soft, fragrant yeast rolls. “When I bake something, it doesn’t last that long, so I guess it’s all right,” she says. Photo 4: Hayes says she and her late husband never had money to save even when they were working. “We had enough to pay rent and buy food and the things we needed.” Photo 5: Hayes was the first to move into the Clyburn senior apartments at Stapleton. Prior to that she lived in nearby Park Hill for the first 28 years of her retirement. Photo 6: Five generations of Hayes women are living today. Four are pictured here: Far left, Gladys Cook, 72, and her mother, |
More Americans are living longer, healthier lives, and better economic conditions should, in theory, assure they approach a retirement with a bigger nest egg.
But people living a pillar-to-post existence during their working lives will be just as hard pressed to squirrel away money as Hayes was.
Her demographic – people 75 and over, known as the oldest old – is the fastest-growing group in the U.S., and human service providers worry the government safety net, already stretched tight, isn’t strong enough to catch everyone who outlives their bank account.
Food programs – such as the one that delivers a box of groceries to Hayes each month – can take no more clients.
There are waiting lists for subsidized housing. The Social Security system, long counted upon as the keystone of many people’s retirement plans, is headed for major change that may leave them with too little to live on in their sunset years.
“You can outlive anything,” says University of Colorado economist Richard Wobbekind. “I don’t have the pessimism that we’re all going to be out on the street, but the changes will require us to take care of more of our own financial future.”
Most companies have abandoned defined-benefit annuities – programs that guarantee a paycheck for life – for market-driven, employee-managed 401(k) plans that can be drawn down to nothing.
Today, only about 31 percent of people 65 and older have a pension; and two-thirds of retirees depend on Social Security for more than half their income, according to AARP’s Public Policy Institute.
But Social Security, designed to protect the poorest citizens, may be revamped to include 401(k)-style investments.
And while this may improve the life expectancy of the system, the devil is in the details.
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THE AGING POPULATION
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“If you’re trying to live off your 401(k), drawing a certain amount per month, based on the idea that you’re living to 83, but instead you live to 93, you’re going to be in trouble,” says John Rother, AARP’s policy and strategy director.
Hayes lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment in the year-old housing complex called Clyburn at Stapleton, where wide hallways fitted with handrails radiate out from comfortable common rooms.
Her apartment is filled with the memories: Pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela hang near photos of her kids, her seven grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, though she’s lost track of their numbers.
Collected salt-and-pepper shakers dance on shelves above a sofa. Her dining room table always is set, because she likes to see it that way.
Her bed is covered with a vibrant Broken Star quilt pieced and quilted in fine, even stitches. “Oh, I would stay up so late, and my eyes hurt so bad, but I’d keep going and going,” she says.
Hayes’ windows look west toward the mountains, over the Park Hill neighborhood where she lived for the first 28 years of her retirement. When she saw the leasing office for the income-restricted apartment complex open, “I ran right over and put in an application.”
Hayes had never lived in a brand-new home. “And she wanted to,” says her daughter, Gladys Cook. “She was the first one to move in.”
By Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) estimates, the metro area boasts the third-largest-growing population of seniors in the U.S., but only about 30 percent of their housing needs – subsidized and market rate – are being met.
Elisabeth Borden, a principal of The Highland Group Inc., a Boulder senior housing market research firm, estimates there are about 12,500 affordable independent living units in the metro area. “This is the biggest area of unmet need: units for people who can’t pay full-market rent. There is a big, big gap.”
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SHARE YOUR STORIES
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Builders have begun to anticipate future demand for senior-friendly, independent-living complexes like the 100-unit Clyburn building at Stapleton. But the number of people 60 or older in the metro area is expected to double to 575,175, or about a quarter of the population, over the next 25 years, and it’s not clear how their housing needs will be met, says Terence Quinn, a senior planner for DRCOG and a member of the newly organized Denver Metro Senior Housing Council.
“If we choose to ignore the warning signs and the need to develop housing for seniors, 25 percent (of the population) is going to be a problem,” Quinn says.
Because she has a Section 8 housing voucher, Hayes pays about 30 percent of her monthly income toward rent; the federal government picks up the rest.
About 16 percent of the 5,800 Section 8 housing vouchers managed by the Denver Housing Authority are used by people over age 62.
Federal budget cuts, however, mean new clients are added only when another client drops out of the program.
“We do not think there is enough senior housing out there, and we’re using all of the tools we can utilize to create more,” says Kathi Williams, director of the Colorado Division of Housing.
Like about 15 percent of people over age 65 in the metro area, Hayes lives on less than $13,237 a year, which is 150 percent of federal poverty guidelines.
The Clyburn complex pays for her water and heating bills; Hayes is responsible for the electric, phone and cable costs.
After monthly household expenses, not much remains of Hayes’ Social Security check – enough to cover a dinner or lunch out with family now and then but not so much that she can fritter money away.
“I’ve got to kind of budget,” she says. “I do have enough to pay my bills and buy food. I don’t have extra money to go shopping.”
In years past, Hayes and a friend who drove would head to the mall – but only to window-shop. “If you stay home, you won’t spend the money you spend if you go, but it’s nice to look around,” she says.
A box of groceries from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, administered by Food Bank of the Rockies, helps stretch Hayes’ food budget.
In the city and county of Denver, about 12,000 people each month receive $50 in canned goods and cheese from the commodity program. Most are seniors; none has income higher than $1,009 per month.
“For most of the seniors who come in, I’m seeing Social Security income statements of $600 or less,” says Mike Gilligan, a food bank program certification supervisor. “I would categorize that as severe need. I wish we could give them more.”
Only 32 states have the commodity food program, and that bothers Leona Martens, executive director of the Weld Food Bank and a member of the national board of directors for the food program.
The aging population would be better served, she says, by a comprehensive senior nutrition policy “so we can look at getting food to the senior population nationwide. Need is increasing. We need to pick our heads up out of the sand.”
With the exception of a cataract surgery a few years back, Hayes has been blessed with good health. No broken hips, no long-term illness.
She takes medication to control blood pressure and downs a baby aspirin daily to ward off heart attack and stroke. “I try to take care of myself,” she says. “I’m doing pretty good. I try to eat like I should, mostly.”
She attends church services on Sundays and participates in a Tuesday prayer group at Macedonia Baptist in her old Park Hill neighborhood. She meets monthly at the church for lunch and speakers, and, occasionally, for trips to events like the rodeo or circus.
She helps out where she can at the church’s food pantry and clothing bank, volunteering for “seniors and sick people.”
“I treat people like I want them to treat me. That’s the way we were taught by my dad,” she says. “He’d say: ‘Treat people right, all those you can. Those you can’t, feed with a long-handled spoon.”‘
Staff writer Dana Coffield can be reached at 303-820-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com.
