True, you could’ve said the same thing 20 years ago and 40 years ago. But the gains made against cancer during the first two decades of the 21st century are so profound – and so unexpected given other trends that should be leading to more cancer deaths, not fewer – that some experts are talking again about the idea that cancer could be cured.

The Centers for Disease Control issued a report in June that crunched a range of U.S. cancer statistics collected during the first two decades of this century. The data track how roughly two dozen types of cancer played out in hundreds of locales, and they measure disease outcomes for all Americans based on gender, age and race.

It’s a complex study, but the bottom line is simple:

Cancer isn’t as lethal as it used to be.

In fact, the report’s key finding is that the U.S. cancer death rate was about a third (29.2%) lower in 2022 than it was in 1999.

“I don’t know if I’d have had the same outcome if I’d been diagnosed 20 years earlier, or even six months earlier,” said Tasha Champion, an Apple Valley resident who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2016, a day before she turned 36.

“I can’t say if cancer treatment, overall, has changed. I wasn’t involved in it before. But I’m glad to be where I am now, which I’m positive is because of the treatment I got at the time,” she said.

“A lot more people, like me, seem to be winning.”

Like much of the CDC report, the death rate, which strips away population growth, is a number that tells a very human story. At the turn of the century, cancer was killing 200.7 out of every 100,000 Americans, but by 2022 the number was down to 142. In a city the size of Burbank (population 104,000) that translates to about 60 lives saved per year. In a nation the size of the United States, population 333 million, that translates to about 3 million lives saved since 2000.

The agency also looked at the geography of cancer, tracking trends by state, county and even congressional district. In California, cancer deaths are running about 10% lower than the national average and the state’s gains in cancer mortality since 2000 match the gains made nationally.

County-level cancer numbers in the report cover only a five-year window ending in 2022, so it’s tough to track long-term trends. But, locally, those numbers also paint a mostly upbeat picture. People living in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties are all less likely than other Americans to die of cancer, and the cancer death rate in San Bernardino County is within the margin of error for matching the national average.

All of which isn’t to suggest the story of cancer in America is only about numbers.

Oncologists and other experts and even some patients, like Champion, say every gain against cancer has involved some combination of human tenacity and intelligence and imagination. That formula, they add, can be applied to everyone from lab-bound researchers to patients volunteering for clinical trials.

And just as cancer isn’t a single disease (but is, instead, a constellation of diseases in which the bad actor cells tend to behave in a similar fashion) experts note there’s no single reason why the fight against cancer is going well.

For that, they point to changes and advances and trends that range from the obvious to the obscure.

The anti-smoking campaigns of the 1980s and ’90s are paying off in fewer cancer deaths in the 2000s. And while the Human Genome Project, which launched in the 1990s, didn’t lead to a cancer cure, as was once suggested, it did spin off other research that translated into DNA- and RNA-based ways to detect and treat many common types of cancer.

Even new laws – hikes in tobacco and alcohol taxes and municipal codes that limit the use of tobacco in public places – have led to fewer cancer deaths.

“We are finally seeing results from all the years of research and investment, and from patients participating in (cancer) research,” said Dr. Ed Kim, an oncologist who works as physician-in-chief and senior vice president for City of Hope Orange County, a branch of the Duarte-based cancer research center.

Kim, like others who’ve been working in cancer research and treatment since the 1990s, described a series of changes – some profound, some subtle – that have hit his profession over the past two decades.

Some drugs once used only for patients with advanced cancers have been deemed safe and effective for more people, boosting survivor rates. Biomarker testing – a genetic-based science that can help link specific treatments to specific cancers – has improved mortality numbers even though its widespread use is fairly new. Even some procedures that have been around for decades – surgical removal, for instance – are being used in new ways.

Overall, Kim described an evolving world in which cancer treatment is shifting from something akin to a broad, impersonal war – the blunt use of chemicals and weapons against mysteriously raging cancer cells – into something more like a series of criminal investigations, with genetics and other evidence used to solve individual cases of cancer.

“It’s a new era,” he said.

Odds in your favor

Not every number in the CDC’s report is uplifting.

For example, even though the national cancer death rate has dropped steadily since 2000, the total number of cancer deaths has not, rising by about 10.5% during the period tracked by the CDC, slower than the 18.5% growth in population in that period. In 2022, about 609,000 Americans died of cancer, making it the nation’s No. 2 killer, just behind heart disease. (The CDC also notes that cancer data from 2020 through 2022 was less reliable because the pandemic prompted some people to delay cancer screenings, and the surge in COVID-19 deaths may have masked some possible cancer deaths. In 2020 and ’21, COVID-19 was the No. 3 killer in the country, behind heart disease and cancer.)

That uptick in the raw death count is partly about age and obesity. Since 2000, America’s median age has jumped about 10%, to 38.8 years. Also, during that time, the percentage of American adults who are considered obese has jumped from about 31% to 42%. Because cancer is more lethal for older people, and often more common for people struggling with their weight, those factors have offset some of the gains made by technologies and treatments and healthier behavior.

Another factor in cancer’s stubborn lethality is equity.

People with no health insurance still die a lot more frequently of cancer than do the people with insurance. And the CDC numbers reveal shocking differences in cancer death rates based on race, gender and geography; a Black man living in Mississippi is three times more likely to die of cancer than an Asian woman in California.

Also, during the period tracked by the CDC, a few cancers (liver, uterine, pancreatic) appear to have become more lethal, not less. And huge gains made in prostate cancer death rates from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s – a result of the emergence of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing – appear to have leveled off since about 2012.

And, critically, while the nation’s cancer death rate has fallen, the rate at which new cancers are diagnosed has been close to flat, declining just 4.7% between 2000 and 2019. That suggests gains in cancer treatment are having a bigger impact than the gains in cancer prevention.

Still, the report tells a story of broad, long-term improvement. Cancer death rates have dropped – and survivorship has gone up – in every U.S. state and territory during the period studied. What’s more, the pace of improvement appears to be accelerating; from 2015 through 2019 cancer death rates in the United States fell by about 2% a year, doubling the pace of improvements made during the late 1990s.

Oncologists say all those changes have led to a simple, fundamental shift in the way they – and their patients – view cancer.

“You’re more likely to survive cancer, today, than you are to die from it,” Kim said.

“That wasn’t always true.”

Tasha and Kathie and tech

One of the numbers pulled from the CDC report is 3 million.

That’s roughly how many more Americans are living today because of lower cancer death during the past two decades, according to estimates by the CDC, the American Cancer Society and others.

No single technology or discovery is responsible for that.

But at least two women, Champion and Kathie Simpson of Mission Viejo, can point to a single advancement –- the arrival of oncotype testing for breast cancer, in 2004 – as a key reason why they’re around to share their cancer stories and confident about their futures.

The so-called “onco test” tracks 21 genes, and it can help predict a patient’s odds of developing breast cancer or the odds of breast cancer returning.

For Champion, the onco test was part of a broader story about her family history and her own future. She said her mother, who survived breast cancer in the late 1990s, was found in 2015 to carry the BRHC gene, a discovery that meant Champion and her two sisters might be at much higher risk than average of developing breast cancer. Champion soon took a similar test and was told she had an 87% chance of developing breast cancer, odds similar to what doctors gave to one of her sisters.

From there, Champion, a mother of four, opted to undergo a double mastectomy as a way to stave off any future breast cancer. But during that procedure, doctors found and removed a cancerous tumor, something that hadn’t been detected during a mammogram Champion had taken just six months earlier.

Discovery of the tumor – which Champion said was deemed “triple negative,” meaning it was more likely to be lethal – led to three rounds of intense chemotherapy, a lot of prayer and many late-night phone calls with her sister, who was living through a similar experience.

“People really questioned that surgery,” Champion said. “We were accused of not having enough faith, or of wanting a free implant job.”

But she said the subsequent cancer diagnosis was “more motivation than vindication,” and that the experience had the unexpected side effect of making her more confident.

“The decision reinforced my faith, in God and in myself,” she said. “I’d heard that little voice tell me to get the surgery and I listened to it.

“I have tried to continue doing that ever since.”

For Simpson, 48, who survived a 2021 breast cancer diagnosis, the onco test has produced a personalized report with a number – 19 – printed in large, bold type. The number reflects several factors in her genetic makeup and her current medical status that, combined, predicts she’s 94% likely to never experience a breast cancer recurrence.

The report, the detailed forecast, and the lumpectomy Simpson underwent with no follow-up chemo, were not widely available to breast cancer patients as recently as 15 years ago.

“For me, being a worrier, not a warrior, I don’t know what I would have done without that number,” Simpson said. “Ninety-four percent is a good number.”

Like Champion, Simpson – armed with a positive cancer forecast and a new, “don’t sweat the small stuff” mindset – is more confident today than she was before cancer. Last year, she and a partner quit their long-running jobs to start a new business (Keepsakes by KJ) selling souvenirs from around the world.

“The hardest thing in my life was telling my daughter, who was 16 at the time, ‘I have cancer,’” Simpson said.

“After that, everything is easy.”

Cancer for the cure?

Cancer might be the most well-funded issue in American life.

Politics, religion, even many other diseases can be divisive in some way. But raising money for cancer research and cures and prevention has been an ongoing part of American life since 1971, when then-President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act.

Nixon’s idea was to use the space race template to focus the government on curing cancer. He even used the words “war on cancer” during the signing ceremony.

That effort didn’t quite pan out, but the mindset has carried on. Every president since Nixon has offered at least lip service to curing cancer. And cancer research, through the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, as well as the money generated by hugely profitable cancer drugs, has laid the foundation for many of the gains that are now bearing fruit.

It’s also why so many people, including Simpson, Champion and fellow cancer survivors Steve Bell of San Clemente and Michelle Rand of Hermosa Beach, spend at least some of their post-cancer lives promoting Relay for Life a series of walking/running events held in cities around the world that raise money for the American Cancer Society.

Rand, who in 2022 was diagnosed with an operable form of lung cancer – a version of the disease that wasn’t common even a decade ago, before improvements in surgical procedures and advances in lung cancer gene therapies – said the Hermosa Beach events she helps run have raised $4.1 million over the past 22 years.

She was raising money many years before she had cancer and says she plans to stay involved for many years to come.

“I’ve lost many friends to cancer over the years. But I’ve got a lot of friends who’ve lived, too. Now, that’s me.”

“I’m alive,” she added. “That’s my bottom line.”

Bell, who survived a 1997 bout with colon cancer, has spent most of his adult life helping that cause. The former manager for fitness and health programs in the city of Mission Viejo eventually became a full-time ambassador for the Relay for Life cause. That role has taken him to events around the country, as well as in Denmark, Gibraltar and Australia, among other places.

“Down there they call it bowel cancer,” Bell said, referencing the version of cancer he vanquished.

The fundraising, he said, is crucial.

“Of course, it matters,” he said. “There’s still so much to do.”

For Dr. Stephen Gruber, who directs the Center for Precision Medicine at City of Hope in Duarte, there’s just one thing on the to-do list: cure cancer.

“I use the word ‘cure’ as often as I can,” Gruber said.

“That’s because it’s true and appropriate. Many cancers are curable. We don’t use the word when we don’t have evidence, but the fact is that we are curing many more cancers than we used to. We’re not afraid of the word because we’ve made enough advances, and we’re in a situation of knowing the genomic profile of tumors that give us the power to use medication in very specific ways that, yes, lead to cures.”

“The future is bright,” Gruber added. “I’m incredibly optimistic.”

That demographic conveyor belt, or something like it, isn’t new. Every election cycle people come of age, people die and voting happens.

But routine doesn’t always equal stagnation. Voters entering the political scene at any given time bring a different set of values than the voters they’re replacing. Sometimes the differences are slight, and America’s political direction changes at the margins. Other times the differences are stark enough to reboot the entire electorate, with the shift typically lasting several election cycles.

A lot of experts, of varying political stripes, say 2024 could be the start of one of those other times.

Think of the voters that came of age when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, and how they boosted Democrats until the late 1960s. Or of how Baby Boomer and Generation X voters, who came of age from the start of Richard Nixon’s administration to the end of Ronald Reagan’s, have a conservative tone that has included the Trump era.

This year’s new voters, Millennial and Generation Z types who have come of age during an era of whipsaw politics – the Great Recession, followed by Barack Obama, followed by Trump and the pandemic and, finally, Biden – could be similarly transformative.

No expert is saying the newcomers will instantly supplant older voters as the nation’s most influential. Numbers and voting patterns suggest that’s far off. But many suggest the attitudes, if not the behaviors, of younger voters could add some much-needed optimism to American politics.

A lot of young voters echo that belief.

“We matter,” said Henry Nguyen-Phuoc, a 21-year-old political science major at UC Riverside and president of the school’s tiny (“about 10, maybe 12 full-time members”) Democratic club.

“Now, I can’t say my vote in California, in this presidential election, will matter specifically. I could vote for Mickey Mouse and the state will go to whoever is the Democratic nominee,” he said.

“But younger voters matter a lot in other states,” he added. “And on a kind of different level, something is happening everywhere, I think, and a lot of people can kind of feel it without really knowing what it is.

“It’s some kind of big shift.”

That shift, if it happens, might be less about politics, specifically, and more about civics.

Like other young voters, Nguyen-Phuoc said he hoped – but wouldn’t predict – that his slice of the electorate might pull American voters out of the current doom loop of anger, inaction and misinformation.

“I’m a weirdo,” Nguyen-Phuoc said, laughing. “I mean, I like football and sports and stuff, but I love politics. Like, I have C-SPAN on right now, dude.

“So, I don’t think there are a lot of people like me,” he added.

“But I do think even a few people who care a lot could make a difference. It’s possible the big shift will be that everybody chills out.”

OK, Gen Z’ers

Or not. Research shows the youngest voting bloc – roughly 54 million first- and second-time voters between the ages 18 and 29 – is nearly as irate as older voters when it comes to how they view the current state of America’s political scene.

But unlike the Boomers and others who came of age when a political selling point was that government is the problem, younger voters are vexed because government isn’t – yet – a reliable solution.

They don’t want government to go away; they want government to live up to what they view as its potential to be a positive force in their lives.

“Politics, and government, are important. It’s the groundwork for how our society is laid out,” said Darious Abdollahi, a 24-year-old student and retail worker in Irvine.

“So it’s important to make changes,” he added. “It feels like politics and government have been muddied into serving corporations.

“But that doesn’t have to be the case. I believe we can do better.”

Research suggests a lot of younger voters agree, in part because they differ from older voters in several key ways.

They’re way less White and religious and wealthy than older voters. They’re also more influenced by specific issues, including the environment, gun control and racial justice. They’re less influenced by old media and their physical communities, and more swayed by social media feeds and even pop culture figures, like Taylor Swift.

And, yes, they’re more liberal – so far.

Over the past four national elections, slightly different versions of the youngest voting bloc have supported Democrats over Republicans at rates far higher than any other age group. Even when looking at how older voters behaved in their 20s, recent younger voters have been more liberal than their elders.

Still, experts say younger voters aren’t a finished product. Nearly one-third of people under age 30, including those who plan to vote in this election, are not registered with either major party. What’s more, experts believe this voting cohort could stay more fluid than older voters throughout their lives.

Above all, research suggests, the newest crop of American voters are something that hasn’t been on the scene in decades – pragmatists.

“They aren’t candidate voters, or even party voters,” said Sara Suzuki, chief researcher at Tuft University’s Center for Research and Information on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), which studies the politics of young Americans.

“They vote based on issues, and they even see how some issues affect others,” she added. “For example, younger voters of color see global warming as a racial justice issue, not just an environmental issue. That kind of thing matters.”

“But they are democracy voters, I’d say,” she added.

“They do believe, strongly, in the idea that government can and should work. That’s fundamental.”

Boomers peaked

But they don’t vote.

That’s what’s been said about younger voters, and their political influence, for decades. And it’s been true that voters under 30 consistently post the lowest turnout of all voting blocs.

It’s still true-ish, but it’s also changing quickly.

Between 2018 and 2022, voting turnout among people born between 1990 and ’94 jumped 144%, while turnout among slightly older voters (born in the 1980s) roughly doubled. Both were the biggest gains of any voting bloc in an era of rising turnout for all voters.

And it’s possible the gap is about to narrow even more. Suzuki said about 57% of people ages 18 to 34 say they’re “extremely likely” to vote in this election, a response that’s similar to forecasts for other age groups.

That said, younger voters punching below their weight at the ballot box has helped conservative candidates and causes. David Faris, an author and professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, has argued that Republican candidates and causes have been propped up in at least the past three elections by differences in turnout rate between younger and older voters.

And that basic idea – older people outvoting everybody else – figures to continue as America’s population gets older.

Numerically speaking, the politics of America’s aging trend looks like this: About 17% of all Americans currently are 65 or older, yet they’re expected to account for about 25% of all voters in this year’s election. By 2036, when the 65-and-older crowd is expected to account for about 21.5% of all Americans, they’re projected to account for 28% of the electorate.

Older voters, in the words of Nguyen-Phuoc, also will matter.

But what will change is the makeup of that older voting bloc.

Currently, the 65-and-up crowd are the most reliably conservative voters in the American electorate. In the 2022 midterms, for example, voters 65 and older favored GOP candidates over Democrats by about 12 percentage points.

But that group is dominated by Baby Boomers, the generational cohort that reshaped much of American culture and politics in the past half-century, and that group is on the way out. By 2050, they’ll account for less than 2.5% of America’s total population.

And any fade-out of Boomers could shift American politics.

In the ’22 midterms, the voting group of people age 45 to 64, made up of younger Boomers and Generation X cohorts, was slightly less conservative than the over-65 crowd, favoring GOP candidates by about 10 points. Younger voters – Millennials and Gen Z – were markedly liberal. The 30-to-44 voting bloc chose Democrats over Republicans by about 16 points, and the youngest voters, ages 18 to 29, favored Democrats by about 28 points.

The other issue that could change is about who people will be voting for.

Age currently has a vice grip on political power in America. Not only are the two likely candidates for president the oldest in history, Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, the average U.S. Senator is 65 and the average House member is 58 – that’s considerably older than the average American, median age 38.

To older voters, it’s a quirk. To younger ones, it’s a sign of profound inequity.

“Watching some of these guys, Biden and Trump, it’s like elder abuse at this point,” Abdollahi said. “They clearly aren’t up to the job, cognitively.”

Nguyen-Phuoc, who said he doesn’t see age as a political deal breaker –  “Hey, Nancy Pelosi is older but she gets (stuff) done,” – believes older politicians, and the political parties they represent, fail to understand how to reach younger voters.

“I have more in common with a guy on his phone in Iowa than I do with the people I grew up with (in Orange),” Nguyen-Phuoc said. “That guy in Iowa follows the same streams, with the same hashtags, as me. So we get the same news and probably have more in common politically than people who happen to live next door.

“I don’t think the people issuing political messages quite understand that yet.”

As evidence, he and others pointed to the current uproar in some conservative circles over Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

The outcry essentially suggested that Swift and Kelce – both 34 – are liberal political operatives who’ll weaponize exposure from the Super Bowl and encourage young people to register as and vote for Democrats.

To some who identify as huge fans of Swift – presumably the group being courted – the outcry is both tone-deaf and flattering.

“Really? I’m going to vote for Biden because Taylor Swift told me to? That’s obnoxious. I’m going to vote for Biden because he doesn’t want to be a dictator,” said 27-year-old Holly Ramirez, a waitress and part-time student who lives in Long Beach.

“I like (Taylor Swift), but I don’t think she controls people’s minds or anything. And I don’t think she thinks she does, or would want to if she could,” Ramirez added.

“But it’s cool that the guys on Fox think I matter.”

First, always stuff some cardboard inside your car windows before turning in for the night.

“You don’t want nobody peeking in, seeing you’re not gonna be able to respond,” Alex explained.

Second, bathrooms at Pearson Park in Anaheim, the spot where they stay in the Explorer, open at 8 a.m. and not a minute earlier.

“Gotta hold it,” Alex said, his quiet voice picking up a couple of decibels. “We don’t go outside!”

Third, in the world of people who are unhoused, age doesn’t always elicit respect.

“I don’t think anybody cares,” said Alex, who, like some others in story is being identified by his first name to protect his safety.

“Anyway,” he added, laughing, “who’re you calling old?”

Alex and Holly are relatively new to being homeless, and whatever life hacks they’ve picked up car camping aren’t particularly unusual. Most people who’ve lived outside for a period of time probably know more.

But Alex and Holly are both 62 and, because of their age, they’re part of a painful demographic trend – homeless retirees.

In the past half-decade or so, as homelessness has grown from social ill to social emergency, the fastest-growing subgroup of homeless has been people landing on the streets after age 50. A survey released in June by the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco found that nearly half (48%) of single, homeless adults statewide are 50 or older.

In Southern California – where average rents outpace average Social Security checks – the world of older homeless people is expanding at hyper speed. From 2017 through 2022, the number of people age 55 and older who sought some kind of homeless-related service in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties grew by 96%, according to California’s Homeless Data Integration System. If you limit that to people ages 65 and up, the numbers either doubled or tripled in each of the four counties.

During that same period, the number of all homeless people, of any age, jumped by about 45% in the four-county region.

Eve Garrow, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who tracks homelessness issues in Southern California, describes the aging of the unhoused as “the next phase” in America’s broad demographic shift to an older population.

“I know a lot of people who are living out their retirement years in homeless shelters,” Garrow said.

“That’s not something that’s going to happen someday, in the future, maybe,” she added. “It’s happening now.”

Paul Leon, a long-time advocate for the unhoused and chief executive of National Healthcare & Housing Advisors, says the rise of aging homeless people is an issue that transcends politics.

“We’ve got 80-year-olds in shelters,” Leon said. “I think most people can agree that’s not tolerable.”

But Leon notes that demographics and savings patterns and modern economics all point to the idea that the current crop of aging homeless people might be just the start of a grim cycle.

“In a few years, the number of old people who are homeless, out on streets and in shelters, is going to be big. We’ll all know an aunt or a sister or somebody who is living in a shelter or on the streets,” Leon said.

“It’ll make today’s homeless problem look small.”

____

Rules

Roy, 61 and unhoused since he turned 55, wants a new hip.

He also wants a room to live in, or an apartment, but the pressing issue this week is the hip. It’s his right one, and it’s at a point where it’s hard to walk on it much. He’s got a wheelchair and a cane and a walker – just like the one his mother used when she was alive – but he sits a lot more than he walks.

He’s also got paperwork from a doctor confirming that he needs a new hip. And he’s got a government-issued cell phone that he uses to call Medi-Cal and others he needs to connect with in order to set up the surgery and its requisite stint in rehab.

But he’s also got a deadline.

Rent for the motel room where Roy has been staying temporarily ends Sunday, July 2. After that, if he can’t square up the surgery and a rehab bed, he’ll literally roll out the door. Then he’ll try to make his way to Orange, where he’s slept in a truck for most of the past six years. But he says the truck was towed off a few weeks back and he doesn’t have money to get it back, leaving him with a new dilemma — sleep in a park or at an uncle’s house?

“I hate to bug anybody and change their lives because of me,” Roy said. “So, I’ll probably go back outside.

“It’ll be difficult because of my condition,” Roy added.

“But, hey, I know the rules.”

He followed rules, he said, all his life. He followed rules when he played linebacker at Katella High in Anaheim. He followed rules, later, when he worked in the medical device industry, and after that when he ran his own home repair business.

He was even trying to follow rules six years ago when he wound up homeless. “But the money was gone and I was just pulled in so many different directions,” he said.

Since then he’s learned to follow rules about living on the street.

“I never leave a mess. That’s really the strict one.”

Roy, as a rule, also avoids homeless shelters.

As an older unhoused person, he said, he’s found that streets and parks and his old truck are all preferable to living in a group setting with younger, sometimes angrier, people. In shelters, he said, “I worry about everything; my wheelchair getting stolen, getting beaten up, all of that.

“When you’re not young, in a shelter, it’s pretty easy to become a victim.”

Roy suggested the problem of living outside as an older person isn’t survival, it’s about respect.

“People like to look at you and judge,” Roy said. “Without them talking, you know what they’re thinking.

“I would like to tell them that, at my age, we’re all just struggling to get into a better position, just like anybody; just like I did for a long time,” he added.

“I’d like to tell them that those looks feel horrible.”

___

Math

In 1983 there were exactly 175,143 defined-benefit pension plans in the United States, according to historical data from the Department of Labor. Roughly 38% of all private-sector workers had such a pension, which was financed by an employer and often guaranteed the worker some kind of monthly check, in addition to Social Security, for the rest of his or her life.

That turned out to be the peak for defined-benefit pensions. Over the next 40 years – roughly the length of many worker’s careers – most employers have swapped out defined-benefit pensions for defined-contribution plans, which are optional for workers and, at best, are only partially subsidized by employers.

Today, about 12% of all private-sector workers have access to an old-school, guaranteed pension. Most public-sector employees – everyone from police to Supreme Court justices – still have such pensions.

Why does any of this matter?

Because while addiction and mental illness and domestic violence have fueled the homelessness wave of the past few decades, federal data suggests a key driver going forward might be the simple math – not enough money to pay the rent – of a post-pension economy.

Only about half of all Americans have any money set aside for retirement, according to the 2019 Consumer Finance Survey, the most recent version of a national poll conducted periodically by the Federal Reserve Board. Even when focusing on workers closer to retirement – people ages 50 to 60 – the survey findings were stark; more than 40% in that age range had nothing set aside for retirement and only 30%  had as much as $100,000. About 12.5% had $500,000.

For many workers, the focus over the past four decades has been less on big-picture shifts in the American pension system than on day-to-day issues, like the price of rent and gas and milk.

“It’s always just been work and pay the bills, work and pay the bills,” said Alex, who has worked consistently over the past four decades, usually as a forklift operator for several local beverage companies and sometimes as a vendor, selling beer and hot dogs, at Angels games.

At 62, Alex says he’d still work if he could. But as he sat in the front seat of his Explorer, he explained his lack of employment by pointing at his knees.

“These don’t let me get into or out of a forklift anymore,” he said. “And, no, I didn’t have no 401 (k) or whatever.”

Other data suggests people who made more money than Alex also might face a retirement squeeze in Southern California.

The 2023 national average Social Security check for a retired worker is about $1,830 a month, according to the Social Security Administration. That’s not enough to cover the average rent for a single-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles ($1,925), Orange ($2,264) and Riverside ($1,899) counties, and only barely enough to cover it in San Bernardino ($1,448) County, according to recent estimates from Zillow.

And even for local retirees with some income beyond Social Security, making the rent can be tough. A survey from the Census Bureau found that if you’re 65 or older, and you have an income of up to $40,000, you’ll typically spend 53% of your total on rent if you live in Los Angeles or Orange counties, and 45% if you live in Riverside or San Bernardino counties. For people with income of up to $70,000, rent eats up 35% in the Los Angeles/Orange County market and 33% in the Inland Empire.

“And I’d say all that’s a (expletive) joke,” said Alex from his front seat near an Anaheim park, when asked about the price to move out of his car and into a place to live.

“You can’t even get a room in a house for less than about $1,200 around here. For an apartment, like what you’re talking about, it’s way more.

“I can’t even imagine it anymore.”

___

Roof

That first night wasn’t as hard as you’d think.

It was 2008 and Helen Muñoz, then 48, was on the streets for the first time, but she wasn’t in tears or particularly afraid.

“I think I just thought that I’m tough and that I’d be OK,” said Muñoz, now 63.

The next 14 years would test that. The former small business owner (she ran a house-cleaning service in Huntington Beach) spent time sleeping on the streets and in shelters, and, soon, applying for government assistance for rent.

For more than a decade, she scrambled for food and shelter and waited for a voucher to help get her back under a permanent roof.

A year ago she got in. Today, she lives in a subsidized apartment in Anaheim, with $300 a month rent taken directly out of her government check.

Katherine White, with Wound Walk OC – a nonprofit that provides emergency-level medical aid to people living outdoors and helps them connect with doctors and other services as needed – still checks in on Muñoz, as she does with Roy and Holly and Alex.

White said a permanent roof isn’t just about comfort. For older people it’s often a matter of life and death.

“I don’t know if Helen would be dead without a place to live. But I do know that living outdoors takes decades off lives.”

Housing advocates Garrow and Leon among others, suggest that full-time housing – putting a homeless person into some kind of home – is more humane, safer and ultimately cheaper than temporary shelters. They say that’s true for the unhoused of all ages, but particularly for the coming wave of unhoused seniors.

For now, Muñoz doesn’t worry about that. Illness and injuries – some a result of living on the streets – leave her unable to work. Her one complaint, she says, is that she’d like to be on the first floor rather than the third, and she’s hoping to make that switch.

But, mostly, she’s happy to not be an older person living on the streets.

Muñoz said her two granddaughters, born just before and just after she first became homeless, sometimes come by to visit. They play cards and watch scary movies and then they go home. It’s the kind of visit she couldn’t have in a shelter or a tent or a car.

In this new place, during the first night, Muñoz wasn’t as tough as before.

“I cried,” Muñoz said. “I was so happy. I just said, ‘God, what took so long?’”