No Place to Grow Old has screened 92 times since its premiere last fall. The documentary produced by the nonprofit Humans for Housing has most recently been shown to members of an Oregon Senate committee hearing as well as congressional staffers in Washington, D.C. Its next screening will be at the Tomorrow Theater on July 26.
As the film highlights, people over the age of 50 are the fastest growing population entering homelessness in the U.S. With Social Security and other benefits lagging behind inflation and the cost of living, and our aging population of baby boomers (the second-largest living generation), this is becoming an even more pressing and dire issue. Particularly in a city with a large population of unhoused people, the very concept of homelessness is often demonized and misunderstood. No Place to Grow Old aims to change that narrative.
The film provides more than talking points, buzzwords and platitudes as it follows the lives of three Portlanders now over the age of 60, all facing homelessness. When No Place to Grow Old was made, Bronwyn Carver, 60, was a cat-loving eloquent poet; Jerry Vermillion, 60, a joke-telling voracious reader; and Herbert Olive, 72, hardworking and warm, described by his son in one word: “gentle.” These three individuals open up with vulnerability, honesty and strength, pushing the film beyond statistics and numbers, and creating intimacy and trust with the filmmakers and, by association, the viewer…