And Then Suddenly! - older lesbians and homelessness

 

Doesn't matter what your background, it's happening more frequently to older women coping alone. : You're going along fairly fine, and then you trip over a mound of rotten luck, or some person does the nasty on you, or a catastrophic thing is inflicted upon your person and THUMP - down you go, the slide to the depths. Maybe you sink down slowly or maybe you fall head first, either way, the unthinkable happens: you're an older woman and you're homeless. 

The above photo is of me - In the late 1970s I was a young lesbian living in London performing a 'Bag Lady' in a play which toured around schools. I was with a Theatre In Education company called Half Moon. On one distressing occasion when I was loitering in a school corridor before making my 'surprise' entrance, the school caretaker spotted me and attempted to escort me off the premises! I had based my character on Gladys, a real homeless woman who lived near me in a bombed out house (because there were still lots of bombed out buildings around back then). That was me acting, but decades later - as in quite recently - my circumstances were such that I could see myself at the risk of becoming homeless if certain ducks lined up. It's a story too personal for here, but it concerned my status as a lesbian partner of long standing and certain in-laws having an enlarged sense of entitlement. Legal advice rescued me. But it's been a bumpy emotional ride - one that's made me especially aware that older women and homelessness is an escalating problem.

"Women aged 55 and over were the fasted-growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness in Australia between 2011 and 2016, increasing by 31 per cent [...] By 2030, it's predicted that 15,000 Australian women over 55 will be without a home." (Sophie Quick in Hidden Homelessness, The Big Issue 3/3/23). Doubtless the figures are similar in many other countries. This problem is less 'visible' than other forms of homelessness, says Sophie Quick, because older women use different strategies than the norm to cope. Rather than sleep rough, they might sleep in their car, couch surf, or maybe manage to co-opt someone's shed as an improvised dossing place. So, as ever, these older women are invisible. 

The bottom line is that there just isn't enough housing for everyone, let alone older women, and that rents are rising like flood water that never goes down.

Some of these women had partners once, they had (limited) superannuation once, family, they were secure  - but shit happens. Sophie Quick says that in many cases that security is whittled away by situations beyond a woman's control. For instance - women often become the full time carer for a family member - there's next to no payment, so savings disappear as the caring work, fatigue, and isolation mounts. Economists refer to it as 'informal care work' and its estimated that the replacement cost of said work, mostly done by women, would be $77.9 billion - yes billion - to the economy.

How many submarines - or rather - how much social housing - could you buy with that?!?!

https://www.amazon.com.au/Secretive-Life-Sara-Hardy-ebook/dp/B09DKLSH93