A lot has changed in the nine years since DeBorah Montague moved into her Norfolk efficiency.
Now 66 and bed-bound, Montague can’t breathe without machines running constantly.
“It’s hard for me to find some place to live,” she said. “I can’t even stand up right now.”
Her landlord told her in February he wasn’t renewing her lease. He wanted her out April 1. But she has nowhere to go and said she feels lost.
Just upstairs, her neighbor got the same letter with the same move-out date. Michael Scott, 67, has lived in the apartment for almost three decades. A near-fatal car accident in the early 2000s left him with a brain injury.
“The car went over the overpass, become airborne,” he said. “I did two nosedives — Bam! Bam! My head went through the windshield.”
Scott can’t drive and struggles to remember things. But he’s learned his way around Ghent. He has friends. He knows where to buy groceries and how to get to his doctors.
“This is my home, I thought,” Scott said.
Both Scott and Montague are seniors. Both depend on disability to pay for rent. And both needed to find a new place to live.
Seniors increasingly struggle
Increasingly, the homeless population is skewing older, both nationally and in Hampton Roads.
“Fifteen years ago, everyone was coming to the table at our meetings and saying ‘a lot of youth are showing up,’” said Julie Dixon, vice president for community planning and development at the Planning Council, a regional social services nonprofit. “And that changed. Just the past 10 years, it's just been ‘everyone's older, everyone's older.’”
The Planning Council leads the annual Point-In Time count, which tallies every person in shelters and on the streets for 24 hours in January. Based on 10 years of data, Dixon said 28% of the homeless population in Hampton Roads is now 55 or older.
Nationally, people 50 and older have grown from about 10 percent of the homeless population to half, NPR reported. In major cities, researchers expect the number of older homeless adults to triple by 2030.
The count is an imperfect measure but provides a snapshot of homelessness. The city of Norfolk provided another perspective.
The Center is a city-run, low-barrier homeless shelter, which means it doesn’t require IDs and doesn’t require its occupants to be sober — though they can’t bring paraphernalia in with them.
Marla Robinson, the programs manager for the city of Norfolk’s housing and homeless services, said about 25% of people who came through The Center in 2025 were 55 or older.
Most of those older folks were experiencing homelessness for the first time, she said.
“They're not street savvy, first of all,” Robinson said. “They're not sure what resources are available because they've never experienced this.”
Limited income, loss of income due to the death of a spouse or partner, mobility challenges and issues using technology all contribute to the trend, said Melissa Bonfiglio, the director of litigation at the Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia. But the root issue, she said, is a lack of affordable housing.
“There's not a happy ending for many of our clients, unless we're able to get them into public housing or senior-specific subsidized housing,” she said.
Dixon said even when older homeless adults can find housing, it doesn’t always work out, especially if they have to relocate away from their support system.
“They end up failing out just because they are lonely,” she said.
Racing against the clock
Mari Pohlhaus has known Scott for decades and was determined to keep him housed. In the past month, she's printed, filled out and hand-delivered 20 housing applications on his behalf.
Pohlhaus said he couldn’t have done this himself.
“It's stressful,” she said. “If he didn't have me, honest to God, I have no clue what would happen to him.”
She submitted applications for Scott to places in Norfolk, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Chesapeake. Each application she filled out for him was at least 20 pages. The biggest was more than 60.
“I just don't know how the poor people do this,” Pohlhaus said.
She said the cost of printing alone would be prohibitive for someone living on razor thin margins.
Scott and Montague find using technology challenging, like remembering passwords, looking for housing online and filling out applications. They face different obstacles, too.
Scott has a felony on his record from his youth before his car accident. He got a misdemeanor in 2013 for possessing a joint of marijuana. The misdemeanor, because it was less than 15 years ago, precluded him from getting accepted into some subsidized housing options, Pohlhaus said.
Meanwhile, Montague is unable to walk and doesn’t have family in the area to advocate for her. She said she doesn’t even know what resources are out there that could help her.
When Pohlhaus met Montague, she reached out to local organizations. But as the April 1 deadline loomed nearer, Pohlhaus said she lost hope things would work out for either of them. She said she didn’t realize how few options there were for people like Scott and Montague — not yet homeless but on the cusp.
“I was shocked, shocked,” she said. “Had no idea. Now I understand why there's so many homeless people.”
The April 1 deadline came and went.
Pohlhaus found a place for Scott in Virginia Beach with little time to spare. She said she’s relieved he’s not homeless. But Scott, far away from what’s familiar, isn’t adjusting well.
“It’s new,” he said. “I don't know nobody. I still get lost whenever I try to get to the store.”
Back in Ghent, Montague hasn’t left the apartment. An attorney from Legal Aid sent a letter April 3 to the landlord, Pieter Reidy, asking for more time.
On a call with WHRO April 6, Reidy declined to comment but said he wasn’t familiar with Scott’s and Montague’s situations. He said he hadn’t seen the request from Legal Aid.
“I don't really deal with the building on a day-to-day scale,” Reidy said, noting he leaves decisions up to the property management group, Coastal Group, Inc.
In the meantime, Montague has to deal with the uncertainty.
“All that keeps running through my mind is that I’m just going to be sitting down on the sidewalk,” Montague said. “That’s what I keep seeing. Just sitting down on the sidewalk.”
Pohlhaus said Scott was close to falling through the cracks of the social safety net — and Montague is still in free fall.
