You realize that predatory crutches become systemic necessities precisely because they band aid such systemic issues from being addressed properly right?
Social security exists because seniors were dying in the streets.
Predatory reverse mortgages shouldn’t exist to exploit desperate people who would otherwise die, anymore than payday loan traps shouldn’t exist getting people trapped in impossible interest traps over a one time shortfall.
Instead of going through the pain and having society respond through governmental policy change, you now have predators making things far worse long term installing themselves as the “free market solution” that needs to be protected by government while bleeding already struggling populations to new depths.
A pay day loan /reverse mortgage may save a person here or there, but their existence at large hurts so many more. I will say it point blank: it was worth a lot of people dying to get social security enacted, because it was a real solution to a real problem, not yet another level of con game drawing out the pain.
And no, social security would not have been enacted when it was without those deaths. It would have been a far worse outcome for society if some predatory workhouse industry moved in and “saved” them in some cruel for profit scheme and declaring the problem “solved.”