Female baby boomers need crisis accommodation
Many baby boomer women are now finding their way to crisis accommodation services, according to a report in The Age by Michelle Griffin.
She quotes Shelley Mallett, Hanover Welfare Services’ general manager of research and service development, who says they and other crisis services and housing agencies are seeing a new wave of clients who don’t have a history of drug or alcohol problems, and haven’t been homeless before.
These are the dinner ladies, office cleaners and housewives of the 1960s and 1970s, getting by with little or no superannuation and a chequered work history as they raised children.
If their relationships break down, their health deteriorates or their income shrinks, these women are being forced out of private rental in larger numbers than ever before.
“They present to [our services] very late,” says Ms Mallett, who is overseeing a wide-ranging study of the ageing homeless for Hanover.
“They don’t know anything about the welfare sector. They have been couch surfing and sleeping in cars… this is an emergency problem that is going to grow, and these are people who don’t need to be in the [crisis accommodation] system.”
Ms Griffin reports that all the research suggests that this problem is only going to get worse.
By 2008, more than 100,000 Australians over 65 were already struggling to stay in their homes, according to a study by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. And demand for public housing for pensioners is expected to increase by 50% by 2016.
But with waiting lists for public housing as long as nine years in some areas, many older people can’t find anywhere to stay. A 2007 Federal Government study of homelessness among older people found that 70% of respondents over 60 were homeless for the first time in their lives.
Three-quarters of the clients of the Housing for the Aged Action Group are women now, says tenancy advice worker, Jeff Fielder.
“It’s a whole new category. These women are quite different from the typical face of homelessness.”
