Elderly women at risk of homelessness
Being a single woman above 45 years of age dramatically increases your risk of being homeless according to a study by Ludo McFerran from the Older Women’s Network.
Stereotypes often portray elderly men as the most likely to be homeless but research now indicates otherwise.
The ‘It Could Be You: Female, Single, Older and Homeless’ study found an increase in the number of women over 45 looking for crisis accommodation at government-funded homelessness shelters.
Last year the number of older women outnumbered older men.
“Increasingly, older women are homeless because they are poor, often owing to detrimental social and economic impacts of divorce and separation,” Ms McFerran said in an ABC News report.
She is calling for more housing to be made available to elderly women, as current services are unable to meet the demand for crisis accommodation from older women.
One-third of the women interviewed for the study, had owned their own home but lost it after separation, divorce or the death of their partner. Their children, citing their own financial hardships, were turning mothers away.
