An Uncharitable Record : Later Years Not Golden for O.C.’s Low-Income Seniors

When her Social Security check arrives each month, Dee Dupree hopes that this time she will have enough money left over to finally replace her only pair of tennis shoes--worn-out, blue-and-white canvas ones she bought four years ago.

But unexpected bills inevitably arrive each month as well, preventing the 69-year-old woman from buying the sneakers.

In August, Dupree had to come up with $200 to replace the battery, windshield and brakes on her 1980 clunker. To find the money, she skipped that month’s phone, gas and electric payments and two weeks of heart medication, choosing instead to grit away the dull ache in her chest.

“Sometimes, when I go to bed at night, I cry, giving in to self-pity, to battle fatigue, wondering what’s going to happen next,” the divorced Santa Ana woman said one day as she sat in the kitchen of a one-bedroom senior housing apartment she shares with her 37-year-old disabled son.

Nighttime is “when it really hits me that I’m growing old and [I am] poor. It’s something you never expected in your life. And it’s a very sad thought and reality.”

Often unnoticed in Orange County--a place where old age generally conjures up visions of comfortable seniors in planned communities tailored to their every need--some 18,908 county residents older than 60 live at or below the federal poverty level of $7,470 annual income for one person, state and federal statistics show.

According to a Times Orange County Poll conducted for this series, 6% of the area’s residents think of the elderly when asked to categorize the impoverished.

The county’s elderly live in a suburban area where the cost of living and rents are high, where the mass transportation many depend upon now is threatened by bankruptcy-related budget cuts.

“When you look at the cost of living, the cost of renting an apartment, the cost of utilities, the cost of transportation and the cost of food and clothing here . . . all are going to be higher than compared, for example, with a rural community like Bakersfield,” said Peggy Weatherspoon, director of the federally funded Area Agency on Aging, which provides meals and services for the elderly in the county.

Though those living below the poverty level constitute just 5.3% of the county’s 356,000 residents 60 or older, service providers worry that they are falling through the cracks.

Many are like Dupree: divorced or widowed, living on Social Security payments and federal and state supplemental income checks. They struggle financially from day to day, carefully scraping together their pennies and quarters, barely making ends meet.

Dupree wears the same clothes for several days before changing, “until I can’t stand the smell,” she says. “To wash and dry, we have to use six quarters [every load] . . . so we wash things by hand as much as we can,” Dupree said.

Just four years ago, before the economic downturn and cancer surgery cleaned out her savings, Dupree ran a business referring people to lawyers. Now, she lives from Social Security check to Supplemental Security Income check, which together total $620 a month. She qualifies for the SSI program because she is disabled by heart problems.

Barbara Purks, 64, receives $622.40 from Social Security and Supplemental Security Income every month. Rent for her trailer space in Midway City is $438.71. The rest of her bills total about $140.

Purks doesn’t tally the numbers anymore. By now she knows too well she has just $40 to spend each month. The reality is, she said, that she just can’t worry about what’s beyond her control, and she’s not going to dwell on the fact that in December her rent will be increased by $125.

“Honey,” she said, waving off a question on how she would make the payment, “when things happen, they happen. I may be dead by then.”

In the meantime, Purks is doing her best to get by on the $40 she has for groceries and other needs. Luckily, her lunches are free, courtesy of a nonprofit agency, Senior Meals and Services Inc. in Garden Grove, which delivers her midday meal five days a week. But to stay within her budget, Purks usually skips dinner.

“I need to lose weight anyway,” said the heavy-set Purks, who has been using a wheelchair since a stroke eight years ago. “I’m used to not eating dinner for a long time now, so I don’t really get hungry.”

County service providers say it is common for low-income seniors to go without food and apply the money saved to other essentials, such as medication not covered by Medicare.

“They piece together this patchwork quilt, cut corners here, save there,” Weatherspoon said. “That’s how they make it.”

Loredana Biro, executive director of Senior Meals and Services, said the seniors are ferociously proud. “Most do not see themselves as being poor. They see that they need to stretch and stretch and stretch their money,” she said.

Many seniors are casting wary glances at a proposed hike in Medicare insurance premiums and the Orange County bankruptcy recovery plan, which is expected to result in cuts to bus routes and other transportation services used by the poor and disabled.

A proposal recently approved by the Legislature would transfer about $570 million over 15 years from the Orange County Transportation Authority to the county for bankruptcy relief. OCTA officials have said the plan could mean a 21% reduction in bus service and limits on personalized pickups for seniors and the disabled.

If that happens, Luz Galindo said she might not be able to go to work at the Santa Ana Senior Center, where she is a kitchen helper.

“I only pay 45 cents to come here,” said the 60-year-old Anaheim woman, who makes about $385 per month at the center. “No bus, maybe no work and no pay and no food.”

Galindo said she doesn’t know how she could cut back any more to pay for transportation to work. “Sometimes, we have to choose between rent and food,” she said. “I cut back on food.

“I have no other money,” she said. “No savings.”

Very few of the poor do. Some who have managed to squirrel away a few dollars say they do so to ensure that they have a decent burial.

Orpha Price, 86, considers herself one of the luckier ones, because her Westminster home is paid off, allowing her to have a “little nest egg.” Every month, after she pays her utilities, groceries and expenses on a 1980 car that keeps breaking down, she has about $50 left from her $498 Social Security check.

Price has been painstakingly putting the $50 in a bank account, she said.

“It’s for my funeral, or if, heaven forbid, I get any long-term sickness,” she said, proudly displaying a bank statement that reflects her life’s savings of $1,352.70.

Having endured economic depression and years of hardship, many of the elderly poor are matter-of-fact about their predicaments. Some, like Purks, have found comfort in religion.

“I don’t worry about tomorrow because the Lord will take care of me,” said Purks, who reads her Bible daily and goes to church every Wednesday and Sunday.

“Yes, I would like to have a better life, but it doesn’t do me any good to think about it. So, I just sit by my window and look at the sky and think it’s beautiful. Things could be worse. I could be old and poor and homeless.”