Why more older Australians are facing homelessness and how they are coping
A former journalist and law student living in public housing and without retirement, whose belongings were destroyed by fire, Keki never expected to find himself on the front lines of the housing crisis at the age of 72.
“I never thought I would have to do this. I thought I would be using private rentals forever,” said Keki, who asked that his last name not be used.
Before the fire, he was focused on raising enough money to buy an apartment or move to Bali, where living costs were cheaper.
But everything changed as I lay in bed one night in February and flames engulfed the living room curtains. Any furniture or electronic items that were untouched in the fire at his grandmother’s house were destroyed by smoke.
It was devastating. He then had nowhere to go and little recourse as he spent his pension looking after his terminally ill siblings. He spent the next two weeks in hotels before landing in crisis accommodation.
“It was a pretty scary time,” Keki said. “You can be on the straight and narrow and be doing well. The housing crisis is one of the reasons this happened to me.”
Up to this point Keki had been able to find and meet new leases, but it wasn’t that simple anymore.
Average weekly rent has risen to $580 in Melbourne and $470 in regional Victoria, with fewer than one in six new rentals being “affordable” for low-income households. Homes Victoria’s latest rental report.
About17,000 women People living in precarious housing were helped by specialist homelessness services last financial year – an average of about 46 cases per day, according to data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. About 14,700 men of the same age also needed help.
More than 1 per cent of the Australian population (289,000 people) received support from these services in the 12-month period; One in six people is under 10 years old. People over 55 and those from First Nations backgrounds are the fastest growing customer groups since 2019.
Helen* set out in late 2024 when her living situation became unsafe.
Money was already tight after the then-60-year-old lost her job, but she never expected to spend the next 16 months alternating between home care, pet care and sleeping in her car.
Sometimes he would go to campsites in regional Victoria or pay for a night at a caravan park without electricity just to use the public showers and laundry. Feeling vulnerable at night, he learned to rely on the yogurt tub as his toilet after dark. The winter was particularly difficult.
“You lie awake at night and think, ‘Oh, I just want a house, I want a toilet, I want a shower,’ and then you think, ‘Oh my God, then I’m going to have to pay at least $350 a week,'” he said.
Few of his friends or family knew about his condition because he did not want to be a burden.
“You’re too young and fit to go into aged care, and you’re too old to compete with many rentals,” Helen said. “Most people live in denial; they think money equals security, but we’re very close to that. You can have a great job, then you get a disease that drains all the resources you have and you lose your home.”
Troy Martin, a community health nurse at Launch Housing’s Southbank crisis accommodation, said many older people he met on the ward were hiding their living situations from adult children.
Some clients are rough sleepers, while others experiencing some form of housing insecurity or homelessness may still be working in paid employment, but whatever their circumstances, their needs for assistance often go beyond just housing.
Martin has encountered people who have had unstable healthcare for decades and victims-survivors of domestic violence who have been prevented from attending appointments by their abusers or have lost contact with GPs because they are afraid to return to an area they have fled.
“There was someone living in a very affluent suburb of Melbourne who had fled due to domestic violence and had nowhere to go. [because] “The domestic violence had infiltrated that person’s social supports and network so much that they felt like they had no one to turn to,” she said.
There has been a 33 per cent increase in the number of women over 55 seeking help from Launch in the last five years, as well as an increase in pensioners and the elderly accessing help.
Chief executive Sherri Bruinhout attributes this in part to aging retirement or the inability of one’s retirement payments to keep up with rising housing costs, while for women in particular it could be a lifetime cumulative effect such as a lifetime spent in lower-paying jobs, career breaks to care for others, reduced retirement or violence.
“I met a woman in her late 70s who was applying for student housing — not that she was a student — but she was applying to rent in student housing because she could no longer manage her one-bedroom apartment,” Bruinhout said.
“Female homelessness is like couch surfing, it’s like sleeping in cars, it’s like trading an overnight stay for an unsafe or unhealthy situation.”
More than 57,000 households submitted new applications for public (government-run) or community (non-profit) housing. Victoria Housing Register As of March.
More social housing is planned to become available over the next few years following announcements from state and federal governments, but an even bigger pipeline is needed to counter decades of underinvestment, Bruinhout said.
Jacqui Theobald, senior lecturer in social policy at La Trobe University, said alarm bells were ringing on this issue A growing number of older women face housing insecurityThe lack of affordable rentals and placements in government housing was now dire as demand exceeded supply.
Stigma and safety concerns keep many people from seeking help, especially after a lifetime in traditional housing, he said.
“A lot of people chalk it up to something they did wrong, their lack of responsibility, their lack of preparation or planning, and actually there are structural factors surrounding it,” he said. “For women, this may be a combination of things such as relationship breakdown, domestic violence, or lack of access to affordable and safe housing.”
After a two-month stay at She-Oak Place, Launch’s women-only crisis accommodation, Keki recently moved into a public housing project she loved, which finally gave her time to relax and recover after the fire.
He landed there after appealing to the local council for help and encouraged anyone struggling with housing to do the same.
Helen also experiences deep relief when she secures a private rental with Launch’s help; She values spending time here tending to her garden and enjoying simple pleasures like buying fresh food to keep in her own refrigerator.
But he will never take it for granted, lately he has been cutting back on driving to save on fuel costs and eating plain meals to pay his rent.
“People don’t want to know how close each of us is to that,” he said.
*Helen is a pseudonym.
Rachael Ward is a journalist on The Age’s City team. Contact her at rachael.ward@theage.com.auConnect via email.
