The voices of mid-life women facing housing insecurity

Single, older women in the State of Victoria, Australia have emerged as a group experiencing housing insecurity and being highly vulnerable to homelessness in their old age. One of the most surprising aspects of this trend is the propensity for these women to be tertiary educated. Focus groups reveal education as a significant means by which these women improved their economic positions, although most had entered female dominated, hence poorer paying industries. However, in most cases their gains came too late in their lives and/or have been undermined by labour market flexibility that has resulted in precarious employment with retrenchments, casualisation, and reductions in hours of work a common experience. The Voices of Mid-life Women continues research commenced in 2007 when North East Housing Service (NEHS) approached Women's Information, Support & Housing in the North (WISHIN) to investigate the rising number of older, low needs women presenting to their service. That work culminated in Going it Alone: Single, Low Needs Women and the Hidden Homeless. In 2012 Elli McGavin, Territorial Social Policy and Programme Development Manager, The Salvation Army Southern Territory approached the Institute for Social Research to commission research in response to older women and the feminisation of poverty in Australia. The resulting research report, No Home at the End of the Road: A survey of single women over 40 years of age who do not believe they will own their housing outright at retirement is the forerunner to this current research report.