By Haadia Hyder, NLIHC Strategic Partnerships & Campaigns Intern
NLIHC kicked off the Summer of IDEAS, a monthly summer film series, with an event on July 8, 2026. The event featured the documentary “No Place to Grow Old,” which focuses on a group that is regularly underrepresented in discussions around homelessness—older adults—and a post-screening discussion with those who made the film come to life.
The documentary gave us the full picture of what happens and doesn’t happen when we stop investing in people. Shortly after, we moved into a panel discussion where audience members tuned in from across the United States, coming from Anchorage, AK; Somerville, MA; Washington, DC; San Diego, CA, and everywhere in between. The conversation was lively, honest, and established a clear sense of urgency when addressing homelessness in our aging populations.
Panelists included Bronwyn Carver, a poet and individual with lived experience and one of the people featured in the film; Davey Schaupp, the film’s director; Michael Larson, producer of the film and executive director/founder of Humans for Housing; and Coralette M. Hannon, director of livable communities at AARP Government Affairs. Together, the group engaged with poignant, value-laden questions, conversed about the state of housing today, and pushed the audience to examine the role they play in their own communities.
When it comes to older adults experiencing homelessness, both Carver and Schaupp emphasized the harmful idea that older adults who are unhoused “should have had it figured out by now” (regarding housing stability), which elicits feelings of shame in at-risk individuals, preventing them from accessing care. As Schupp puts it, “Homelessness sits under the surface of everyone in America,” referencing how close most of us are to being unhoused ourselves and the idea that homelessness is not an individual failure, but a systemic one. When it comes to barriers that keep individuals from staying housed, Carver cites extra fees associated with being a renter, financial burdens that come with supporting others, and the simple fact that the price of everything goes up, “and (your) money doesn't”—which are all systemic issues in renting, elder/childcare, inflation, and wage stagnation.
The discussion routinely came back to the idea of systemic change. When discussing what the best structural solutions could be to prevent homelessness, the answer was simple across the board: “we need to keep people housed.” Schaupp brought up a quote by South African Bishop Desmond Tutu:
There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.
In the discussion of solutions, panelists also highlight the fact that small financial assistance and coordinated services can go a long way to prevent evictions, and by extension, keep people housed.
Lawson shines a light on the relationship between policy and storytelling. Centering lived experiences allows us to ask the hard questions: what are we getting wrong and what does it take to get it right?
For Hannon, the focus is on investing in implementations that work, highlighting the idea that “the system works when we invest in it,” referencing how many of the subjects of the documentary were able to find forms of permanent housing only when intentional investment was present.
When asked what the goal of a film like “No Place to Grow Old” was, the answer was unanimous: to create a world “where it becomes unconscionable to see people experiencing homelessness.” Film can change hearts, hearts change people, and people change policies.
Our next Summer of IDEAS screening will be held in person, on August 13 in Baltimore, MD, featuring a screening of “UnBlocked Englewood”—a powerful examination of housing discrimination, neighborhood disinvestment, and the lasting impacts of systemic racism through the story of Chicago's Englewood community.
You can register to join us in Baltimore here.
You can learn more about the Summer of IDEAS and all the work the Strategic Partnerships team is doing here.