This guest post is by Paul Kleyman, National Coordinator of the Journalists Network on Generations., which he co-founded in 1993. He edits its newsletter, Generations Beat Online, to which I’m indebted for countless thoughtful analyses of aging-related social and economic policies, and as well as how these stories get covered. In the current issue. This article appeared in the latest issue.

 “This Doom Loop Will Hit Every Aspect of Our Lives” was the Page One banner headlineof a special, San Francisco Chronicle Sunday edition, July 13, 2025: The Dek: “Population, Among Oldest in the nation, could put region’s continued prosperity at risk.”

The package, labeled The Graying Bay, covered nearly eight broadsheet pages (about half of the entire A section of the print edition) with individual stories also serialized earlier in the week). Sourly, the section reinforces the negative slant on aging in American culture and mainstream media, as a growing “burden” on the nation’s housing, health and economic wellbeing.

The stories on such topics as the San Francisco area’s increasingly unaffordable housing do contain useful and up-to-date data with some accurate background on operative factors. Yet even discussions about the pressures on Bay Area elders, such as housing, are framed as impediments to young families and the region’s “Future.” 

For instance, the two-page story, “Fastest-aging Neighborhood could forecast Bay Area’s future,” (fully covering 2 pages with photos) by Connor Letourneau, accurately recalls how California’s 1978 ballot measure, Proposition 13, whichled the national “taxpayer’s revolt, froze property taxes for long-time homeowners. That locked in low costs for many in ways that have kept older residents from moving, even when they wanted to, effectively squeezing housing stock for the young. 

What Letourneau (10 years at the Chronicle, U of Maryland graduate, in 2013) did not describe is how Proposition 13 and its clones around the nation merely exacerbated a national housing crisis already aggravated by the federal government’s 30-year lid on subsidies for new low-income housing. (It was only lifted in 2024 by the Biden administration, a story covered by the Chronicle only a year ago.) 

The Bay Area’s well-documented loss of older homeowners and renters have resulted from a range of intergenerational factors. Topping the list is high regional costs leading to post-pandemic evictions, job losses and so much more.

Further, those 50-plus now constitute the fastest-growing segment of the Bay Area’s homeless population. Pervasive age discrimination has hit older workers everywhere. Prop 13’s statewide clump on education funding plunged California’s public learning—and many family’s future, from among the country’s top-rated to near the bottom in the United States. And multiple other cost-of-living factors affecting people across the age spectrum. 

Instead, Letourneau notes, “Due to longer life expectancy, tumbling birth rates and the graying of the baby boomers, the U.S. population has a greater proportion of elderly adults that at any other time since the government began tracking such data 175 years ago.” He continues, “With experts expecting the nation’s rapid-aging trend to shift into overdrive, no single force could shape America more in the coming decades that its older demographics. The ramifications will rip through every part of society, placing unprecedented demands on housing, health care, education and social services.” 

Ramifications of population aging to rip through our social fabric? Yes, that’s surely a fulfillable prophesy. What this and the other “Graying Bay” stories miss is the healthy and productive promise of what gerontologists call “the longevity bonus.” Those vigorous added years may bring—given greater social investment in an aging-friendly, diverse socio-economic order. 

For example, as I reported in my recent story,  Aging in America News (April 1, 2025), “In the United States, according to the report, The Economic Impact of Age Discrimination, AARP and The Economist magazine found that age bias against Americans 50-plus reduced U.S. GDP by $850 billion in 2018 alone.

According to the study, a concerted public-private effort to end age discrimination for 50-plus workers would add $3.9 trillion more to the economy in 2050 (for a total contribution that year of $30.7), than possible have without change.”

The Graying Bay stories quote very few of the leading social gerontologists from the region’s top universities, expert who might have broadened the scope of these lengthy pieces. 

In the end, regarding this “special” coverage of the Graying Bay, there’s both bad news and good news. The bad: Well, read the above. The good news: the San Francisco Chronicle’s paywall is so hard that most non-subscribers, such as journalists, having any interest in the topic will never see it.