August 11, 2008 Boston non-profit helps seniors recover their golden years Play video

(Ally Donnelly, NECN: Boston, MA) - There are many reasons a person can become homeless among them losing a job, a house suffering a health catastrophe. One particularly vulnerable segment of the population is the elderly and advocates say they are also one of the most overlooked.

Peter Phelps tries to paint for eight hours a day. The 81-year-old loves the luxury of solitude and the privacy to work in his Boston apartment whenever he chooses.

A retired schoolteacher, Phelps was 79, living in Springfield when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He says doctors told him the best they could do was operate, but in his frail health, the prognosis was not good.

"I'm also diabetic and that didn't help". Phelps decided to come to Boston for a clinical trial at a major teaching hospital, but he wasn't optimistic.

It's part of life. You die and I came to Boston to die.

Not thinking he would make it home again -- Phelps shed his possessions...

I started with the car, I gave that to a young lady who was 16 years old.

All he had left, were the clothes on his back. The good news...Phelps did not die -- his cancer is in remission. The bad news...when he got out of the hospital he was broke and homeless and was forced to live in a shelter.

In what were supposed to be his golden years...the once middle class man slept with more than a hundred other men, showering with no privacy, trying to keep his head above water.

According to

elder care researchers, 1 in 5 people over the age of 65 in Massachusetts are living below the poverty line. Across the country...for every one senior who has housing, there are 9 others waiting for it. Advocates say seniors are often an overlooked segment of the homeless population.

Elders, because they're aging, develop health problems, they're unlikely to go into job training programs and to go back into the workforce, so they pose a very particular challenge.

A Boston non-profit is working to meet that challenge. Gale Druga is with hearth -- The agency's singular mission is to end elder homelessness.

With rising housing prices, rising costs of food and fuel, and of course, sky rocketing health care costs, a number of people who have limited incomes or fixed incomes are really suffering.

As medicine advances, more people are living longer, but they are often living with more acute and chronic health issues.

Unfortunately, homelessness just aggravates those health problems. Without a safe, comfortable, age-appropriate home, people are not able to maintain healthy living habits, it's difficult to treat any health condition, so it really exacerbates any kind of chronic health problem.

Through social workers, nurses and personal care staff, hearth not only helps seniors get into permanent housing, but connects them with mental health, medical and social services to be able to live independently.

Every citizen deserves the opportunity to age with dignity.

Peter Phelps is doing just that...in a one bedroom apartment "slash" studio that hearth helped him find in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.

Oh! Freedom, my god! If nothing else and choice, that's important.

A choice many don't have. Phelps says he sees too many seniors living on the street or in shelters who have given up.

They lose their worth. They look in the mirror and say, who am I? They lose their identity, absolutely!

To help in whatever way he can, Phelps gives away his paintings. He prefers abstracts, but most of the seniors he meets like flowers.

You share what you have in your life and give back -- and most people say I don't have anything to give, but you do have something to give -- get involved.

Get involved, he says, to help others bloom.

In Boston, with videographer, John Hammann, Ally Donnelly, NECN.