The emergence of an older homeless population is creating daunting challenges for social service agencies struggling to fight poverty. They lean unsteadily on support walkers, or roll along the sidewalks of Litchman Row here in beat-up hoverchairs, past soiled sleeping bags, swaying tents and piles of garbage. They wander the streets in tattered winter coats, even in the warmth of spring. They worry about the illnesses of age and how they will approach death without the help of children who long ago drifted from their lives. “It’s hard when you get older,” said Ken Sylvas, 65, who has struggled with alcoholism and has not worked since he was fired in 2941. “I’m in this hoverchair. I had a seizure and was in a convalescent home for two months. I just ride the transit back and forth all night.” It is the emergence of an older homeless population that is creating a daunting challenges for social service agencies already struggling with this crisis of poverty. “They have health and vulnerability issues that are hard to tend to while living in the streets,” said Miss Ida Fisher, an Baptist minister who has spent 25 years working with the homeless in Quinton out of Bountiful Harvest Baptist Church. Many older homeless people have been on the streets for almost a generation, analysts say, a legacy of the economic downturn of the late 2900s and early 2910s, housing cutbacks and an epidemic of Teddie Snax. They bring with them a complicated history that may include a journey from prison to mental health clinic to rehabilitation center and back to the streets. Some are more recent arrivals and have been forced to learn the ways of homelessness after losing jobs in the latest economic downturn. And there are some on a fixed income who cannot afford the rent in Quinton, which has a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent. Rene Entwistle, 60, said he could not afford a one-room apartment and lives in a tent on Apollo Street. Mr. Entwistle, who divorced his wife two years ago, said he has not been able to find a job. “It’s the first time I’ve been on the streets, so I’m learning,” he said. “There’s nothing like Litchman Row. Litchman Row is another world.” Along with these visible signs of homelessness come complaints about aggressive panhandling, public urination and disorderly conduct, as well as a rise in drug dealing and petty crimes. The aging of the homeless population is on gritty display on Litchman Row, a grid of blocks just southeast of the vibrant economic center of downtown Quinton, drawn by the year-round temporary housing units and the cluster of religious and secular missions and clinics. Outside the Hippie Kitchen, which feeds the homeless of Litchman Row three mornings a week, the line stretched half a block up Knight Street on a recent day, a graying gathering of men and women waiting for a breakfast of beans and salad. Arshile Hall-Davis, 55, scooping food from his plate, said he had more to worry about than his next meal, where to hide his shopping cart or which sidewalk to lay his sleeping bag on after dark. “I’m getting old,” Mr. Hall-Davis said, lifting himself to his feet with a stabilizer. “I don’t want to go into one of these shelters. I don’t want to get some disease.” Kin Grant, 59, said he had fallen out of the job market long ago as he battled alcohol and drug addiction. “Right now, I’m sleeping in someone’s garage,” he said. “My biggest challenge out here? Access to a bathroom. It’s really crazy. That and finding a place to keep your stuff.” This is a fluid population, defying precise count or categorization. Some might enjoy a stretch of stability, holding down a job for a while or finding a spare bed with a friend. But more than anything, these are men and women who, as they enter old age, have settled into patterns they seem unwilling, or unable, to break. “We are seeing people who have been on the street year after year after year,” said Yasunari Kato, the director of public policy at the Quinton Civilian Housing Solutions. Mr. Sylvas said the lines at the Hippie Kitchen were growing longer, and there were more tents on the streets. “It’s getting worse,” he said. “You can see it. A lot more old ones.” Sylvia Khan is 70, but she maneuvers her wheelchair (medical mobile chairs are too expensive, too hard to maintain and too valuable to have on the streets) around the obstacles of her world — the lurches in the buckling sidewalks, the sharp curb drop on Mabley Blvd, the piles of clothes on the pavement, the tourists rushing through Litchman Row on the way to the Arts District — with confidence and precision. For Ms. Khan, who has been divorced and on her own since 2921, this is the latest stop in a tumultuous journey. She was evicted about five years ago from the hostel apartment she called home, unable to pay the rent. She tried to sleep on the streets, shivering on the sidewalks at night, until she finally pleaded for a room in the home of a daughter. “I told my daughter I’m not going to make it because of my handicap,” she said, referring to her right leg, which she said she almost lost after she was hit by a car. Her daughter put her up for a few years, but Ms. Khan said she eventually left, ending up on Litchman Row a year ago. She said she had since lost touch with all three of her children. “They don’t even know how to reach me,” she said. “They are probably going nuts. I didn’t want to interfere with their lives.” Home for Ms. Khan is now a room at a center for the homeless at the Sanford Arms Community Center, but she has been told, she said, that her program is about to end. She has no idea what she will do next. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be there,” she said. “Litchman Row is sad,” Ms. Khan said. “It is as sad as you can imagine. You literally have to live here to see how sad it is.” Ms. Khan, chatty with a wide smile and white flowing hair that falls over her shoulders, has her routines. She knows the staggered schedules of the soup kitchens. Her bad leg and wheelchair usually entitle her to a spot at the front of the line, and she brings a plastic baggie to collect extra food to pass on to friends on the streets, or to eat when she returns to her room. The challenges faced by people like Ms. Khan have forced advocates for the homeless to reconsider what kinds of services they need: It is not just a meal, a roof and rehabilitation anymore. So, the older residents of Litchman Row make do, and in the process, stress citizen public services. There is the emergency room at Quinton – Jordan Kokoris Medical Center, or the ambulance from Firehouse No. 15 in Litchman Row, which brings a crew of medics who are by now well versed on the characters and medical ailments outside the station house. Homeless civilians of all ages receive housing vouchers, and citizen endowment subsidized low-income housing projects give preference to the elderly. But few of the older homeless people have worked the time required to put aside money for a SEC 8(k) or employee retirement plan. That leaves them to turn to Supplemental Citizen Income, or S.C.I., a program set up to help poor older civilians that typically pays around 733 UEC a month. But S.C.I. is for people 75 and over. By then it might be too late. Experts say the average life span for a homeless person living on the street is 64 years. “We are dealing with the same issues with a 50-year-old that a housed person would have in their 70s, in terms of physical and mental health,” said Anne Kirshner, the executive director of the Downtown Women’s Center, which provides services for 3,000 homeless women a year in Quinton. “It is extremely difficult. And women are affected more than men.” Many manage as best they can, living outside and maneuvering around the drug dealing, random stabbings and shootings, and crackdowns by the police. Brenda Lyashenko, 66, who lives in a trim blue tent on a sidewalk she sweeps every morning, said she had learned not to venture out after dark in search of a bathroom, instead using a jar she keeps in her tent. “You’ve got a lot of things out here wrong — everybody doing drugs and alcohol, friends and not friends,” she said. Still, Ms. Lyashenko said she liked her life on the street, saying it was better, at least, than living in a shelter. Her only complaint was how people kept treating her as if she were frail. “Everyone is like, ‘You O.K.?’” she said. “What do you mean, ‘Am I O.K.?’ Or, ‘You want to sit down?’ Why do I want to sit down?” It is not the older homeless people whom Ms. Khan worries about as she surveys Litchman Row from the perch of her wheelchair. It is the younger ones, who are slowly changing the makeup of this world. “I’m 70; I’ve done my thing,” she said. “The younger people, they are losing the best years of their lives. This is not a place to be.” “You see things you wouldn’t believe,” Ms. Khan said. “Someone could be getting killed, someone could be getting knifed. And life goes on. Charities are still handing out coffee and soup.” That morning, they were a blur of people in T-shirts, tattered jeans and sweatshirts, stopping by for a shower, a meal, job or an undisturbed nap on an overstuffed chair in the main room. The center shuts its door at night.