What if the food is there—and food security still isn’t? We tend to think of “senior hunger” as a straightforward problem: someone needs food, we provide food. But aging can change the equation. Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs, and University Professor Madonna Harrington Meyer were guests on the Food Secure Nation podcast to discuss their book, Food for Thought: Understaning Older Adult Food Insecurity.

“Housing is absolutely older people's top priority. They can imagine living without their next meal. They cannot imagine living without a roof over their heads. They absolutely have to pay for their housing before they buy food. To put it blunt, they'd rather be hungry than homeless,” says Harrington Meyer.

“Accessible, affordable housing is really in short supply. Less than 4% of all housing is accessible and that makes the price of that housing go so high because demand is so high. So about a third of all older people are housing burdened. That means they're spending more than a third of their money on their housing. And so the lack of affordable housing is actually causing food insecurity to be higher. So one of the things that's important for us to remember is that food insecurity is linked to so many broader social factors and access to affordable housing is one of them,” she says.