When home is no longer safe for older women

According to Dr Ewenson’s latest paper in the Alternative Law Journal, the problem is compounded by decades of unpaid or undervalued care work, leaving many older women financially exposed in later life with lower savings, less superannuation and fewer options when housing costs or climate shocks hit.

“Affordable housing is often located in places most exposed to climate risk, including floodplains, bushfire zones and poorly built homes that don’t protect residents from heat, smoke or extreme weather,” said Dr Ewenson.

“Prevention means more public and social housing, genuinely affordable housing, secure and fair incomes and protections that allow people to live safely and with dignity as they age. The impacts of climate change need to be factored in across our entire housing ecosystem.

“There is an assumption built into our democracy that people are adequately housed enough to participate: to vote, to engage, to have a voice. When people are homeless or living precariously, that assumption breaks down.”

Dr Ewenson said Australian democracy is failing people who are enduring homelessness.

“Core legislative change is needed at both federal and state levels to embed the right to adequate housing,” she said. “A Human Rights Act in New South Wales and federally could help shift how we understand housing as a basic condition for a functioning society.

“We also need to recognise the right to care and the right to give care. That would start to change how we value care.

“Care is not a burden on the economy. It creates enormous value. The people doing caring work, who are mainly women, are keeping communities alive, but our systems still fail to properly recognise or reward that contribution.”

Dr Ewenson is currently embarking on a community-embedded research project, gathering older women’s life stories to better understand how housing insecurity develops and what legal, policy and social changes are needed.

“We, as a society, need to be guided by the expertise of older women to explore what we should do through law, policy and broader social change, to remedy this intensifying crisis of housing precarity for older women in this era of climate change.”