The ups and downs of facing housing insecurity later in life

Support service helping older women navigate the ups and downs of housing insecurity Wed 5 Aug 2026 at 1:02pm For more than a decade, finding a safe and affordable home has felt like a game of snakes and ladders for Meredith. Securing her first social housing unit in her 50s felt like a major step up. She stayed for three years, but living in a noisy environment, where drugs were sometimes visibly present, took its toll. "I realised, even though I would have been beautifully housed for the rest of my life, I couldn't stay there," she said. The search began for a new home, and she landed a winner — an affordable unit in a retirement village on the Sunshine Coast. "I thought I was home and hosed," she said. Six years later, the federal government's rental scheme ended, and Meredith could no longer afford her unit. She slid back to square one. To improve her chances of finding another home, she moved back to Brisbane. While she now has a great place to live, she knows how quickly things can change. "There is an element of insecurity and that scares the living daylights out of me because I have already lost two fantastic housing places," she said. "I have never been on the streets, but the insecurity has been quite severe at times because there is no backup." According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 31,700 people aged 55 years and over received assistance from specialist homelessness services in 2024-25, 2,200 more than the previous year. Of those, 54 per cent, almost 17,000, were women. The availability of rentals in Brisbane's private market remains stubbornly tight at 1 per cent, according to the Real Estate Institute of Queensland. The median cost of rent sits at about $700 per week. Knowledge is power Meredith, now in her 70s, chose not to marry and has never inherited any property. She doesn't have a car or friends with a spare room to call on. But she is determined to keep a roof over her head. In her bid to arm herself with information, she discovered the Housing Older Women's Support Service. The Queensland government-funded program is dedicated to helping women over 50, and First Nations women over 45, navigate the system and move towards finding permanent housing. For Meredith, such knowledge is power and connecting with other women has been a bonus. "I feel like a different person knowing that if worse comes to worst and I do lose my housing, I've got all these people to turn to," she said. The free service was established in 2022 after a group of women rallied together to call on the government to step up. Maggie Shambrook, a founding member of the Housing Older Women Movement, said she was relieved the service was helping women like Meredith. "We're just another group in the housing crisis pool that's trying to swim, and we're drowning sadly." The Queensland-based service is modelled on Home at Last in Victoria, run by Housing for the Age Action Group. It is run by Footprints Community, a not-for-profit that offers a range of support for people covering aged care, mental health, homelessness and social isolation. Two steps forward, one step back Women who have lent on the Housing Older Women's Support Service have shared the ups and downs they have faced through poetry, photographs and art as part of an evaluation of the service by the Queensland University of Technology. Their experiences inspired researchers to develop a board game based on the concept of snakes and ladders. Get financial assistance to cover bond and rent arrears? Move forward six spaces. Feeling unsafe in emergency accommodation? Back you go. Design psychology professor Evonne Miller said the idea was to use creativity to educate and inspire empathy. "We don't realise how we are one misfortune away from this being our story," she said. "We can do better, we need to do better to support older women who are in this precarious situation." During coffee catch-ups and workshops, Professor Miller said she was struck by the resilience the women showed and the support they gave each other. "They are putting their lipstick on, putting their makeup on and doing their best," she said. "They have got this public face of not wanting to share that because there is a lot of shame and fear and worry." For Ms Shambrook and the Housing Older Women Movement, the focus is now on pushing for a more community-led response to housing with input from those being housed. "We don't want to be living in shoeboxes with neighbours who don't know how to be neighbours, so we need to influence that change," she said. "We need some oomph, we need some pressure, and we need visibility because we have got lost in the housing crisis." Want to have your say? Go to www.abc.net.au/yoursay