Senior Citizens have been badly hit by the foreclosure rage. Herman Boxerbaun is one of them. He is a septuagenarian residing in Vallejo and just cannot manage to make ends meet. Earlier this month he got a free meal from the local church and does not know anything more about the future.

Another victim is Vicki Conrad. She is 69 years old and has lost a good amount of her retirement funds when the stock markets tumbled. At present she is working in Florence Douglas Center but fears if she will have to go on working without any pause in sight.

Boxerbaun and Conrad are typical of what is happening to the elderly residents in Vallejo as also in the rest of the country.

The social service agencies in the county point to the lingering recession that is harassing the elderly who are hunting around for the very basics ? food and shelter. To make matters worse many are becoming victims of scams and other forms of abuse.

The impact of the housing crisis continues to unfold with new ugly surprises each day targeting the elderly. The slump in the stock market has wiped out retirement funds and now they have nothing but the slim social security cheques to depend on.

There are fears that things will take a turn for the worse when the state budgets will be snipped. Programmes for investigating abuse of elders that aim to see that the elders lead a healthy life in their twilight years will come to a halt. Previous snips in the budget have already told on the services that are becoming more skeletal.

Many of the elders in all probability will not live long enough to see there lost fortunes recoup from the recent stock market fall, commented Donna Fields of Solano County Older & Disabled Adult Services. She bemoaned, ?People work their whole lives and build up nest eggs to retire and this economy has just fooled everybody. People have lost homes and not gotten a good rate of return on (investments). They are struggling out there to make ends meet.?

What is most worrying that more numbers of seniors will become totally reliant on Social Security ? something that is insufficient on which to survive. The social security system itself is under great threat with its expenses becoming more than what it gets. Conrad explained, ?The biggest worry for this age group is their health care and what’s going to be in place for us.?