When it comes to the work she does, Chander Kanta is indistinguishable from a regular Environmental Protection Agency employee. For the last five years, the 70-year-old administrative assistant has put in 40-hour weeks at the EPA’s campus in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The income she receives, about $2,000 a month, pays for everything: her mortgage, her car insurance, her grocery bill. But because of the government showdown, she hasn’t received a paycheck for more than a month.

There’s one key difference, though. When the government eventually re-opens, regular EPA employees will receive back pay for the time they weren’t working. Kanta will not. That’s because she’s one of approximately 900 enrollees in the EPA’s little-known Senior Environmental Employment (SEE) Program, a grant-funded initiative that allows retired and unemployed older Americans to work at the agency in exchange for salary, benefits, vacation, and sick leave.

Six national non-profit organizations currently administer SEE grants, and enrollees are considered employees of those organizations, not the EPA. Thus, they’re in the same boat as government contract workers from private companies, who also don’t usually receive back pay when a government shutdown ends. In an e-mailed statement on Wednesday, the EPA confirmed that all 900 seniors in the SEE Program are currently furloughed. The agency did not answer questions about whether they would receive back pay.

Kanta isn’t counting on it, and she’s worried. “Every moment I close my eyes, I think about it,” she said through tears in a phone interview. “Where will I get the money? What will I do? I’m all alone here. My children and my family are in India and Canada. They say, ‘Come here.’ But I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to live. I just want to work.”

America is facing a retirement crisis. Working hard for four decades no longer guarantees a comfortable coda to one’s life. According to the National Council on Aging, one-third of all senior households either live paycheck to paycheck, as Kanta does, or are in debt after monthly expenses. More than 25 million Americans age 60 and over make less than $30,000 per year. At the same time, rampant age discrimination in hiring has made it difficult for many unemployed seniors to find jobs that could eventually allow them to retire.