The housing crisis has reached the country’s oldest generations, charities have warned, with a growing number of people over the age of 60 seeking help for homelessness.
Housing charities said they had seen cases of people over-60 developing health problems from being forced to sleep in their car for months, having to sleep on camp beds in emergency shelters and seeking homelessness support even while suffering illnesses such as cancer.
Marie Dennehy, a senior service manager at St Mungo’s, said they had seen an increase in over-65s, often with complex health problems, coming to them for emergency housing support over the past two years.
“We’ve got a guy in the service at the moment who’s 87 – it’s madness,” she said. “We never used to see the number of pensioners we’re seeing now.”
She added that council cuts and the lack of social housing meant that single homeless applicants, even those who are elderly, were not being prioritised for properties.
“That 87-year-old might not necessarily be seen as priority need because they might say, he’s in perfect health, we’re not going to provide him accommodation. Our argument would be, OK, he’s in perfect health, but he’s also 87. He’s clearly more vulnerable than someone who’s 38,” she said.
Dan Holland, from the Salvation Army’s homelessness services team, said that 10% of people living in the charity’s residential accommodation were over 55, and they were seeing a large number of people in the older age category coming to them for help.
“Not as many people now have a mortgage that they’ve paid off and a roof over their head that they can call their own. Lots more people are renting, relying on housing benefit which has been frozen, so it’s not rocket science, eventually they will end up experiencing homelessness,” he said.
One of those was Raymond, 63, who ended up sleeping in his car for seven weeks after becoming homeless following the breakdown of his marriage. He approached the council at least six times for help and was told he was not a priority, before he ended up living at a Salvation Army centre in the north-west.
“My legs were bad, they were really swelling up because it was only a small car so I couldn’t stretch my legs. I was sleeping on the seat and my body was just getting in a mess,” he said. “My doctor put me on folate tablets because I couldn’t afford to eat properly. I wasn’t getting any vegetables.
“I just never got any advice. And I think the trouble with people my age, my generation, we just get on with it, we don’t always reach out. I have no idea what I’m going to do in the future as I’m approaching retirement.”
Holland said services would soon need to start thinking about palliative and end-of-life care for homeless people, as more and more people end up in unstable accommodation in the last months of their lives.
“If you are experiencing homelessness and you are naturally coming to the end of your life, or you’ve got a terminal illness – where do you go? That’s a huge issue that I think is definitely on the horizon,” he said.
Research from Crisis found that one in five (17%) older people said they wanted to retire but could not because of their housing costs, while the number of older people facing homelessness in England has risen more than 50% in the past five years.
There has also been a 35% increase in the number of over-55s in temporary accommodation since March 2022.
Experts said the problem has been exacerbated by the country’s now deeply entrenched housing crisis, which has resulted in home ownership becoming increasingly out of reach and forced people to rent into their later years, leaving them vulnerable to eviction or unsustainable rent increases.
Ben Twomey, the chief executive of Generation Rent, said: “Soaring rents were locking people into renting for decades, forcing older people to live in homes unsuitable for their needs and damaging to their health, while pushing some into homelessness.”
Edith Gomes Munda, a 61-year-old renter in Huntingdon, said she was increasingly fearful for the future, having been forced to move twice in recent years owing to her landlord selling up and rent rises that she could no longer afford.
“It worries me that I may have to move every three or four years, and getting older, there comes a point when everything gets more difficult, more tiring,” she said.
“I’m now 61 and I will get my pension soon but I don’t know if it will cover the rent. I’m healthy enough but how long will I be able to keep working for? I have that on my mind all the time. With the rent increases, you feel like you have to constantly move, you can’t really settle down.”
Munda added that she previously was unable to buy a home and now it was too late. “I gave up on that and continued with my life. Now I’m too old, I wouldn’t find a lender when I don’t know how long I can work for. The only other option we have is to apply for social housing, but the waiting lists are so long,” she said.
The government has yet to publish its long-term housing strategy, which has been delayed until March next year, but experts say prioritising older people is essential.
“Even a reformed private rented sector doesn’t really work for older people. We get a lot of calls from people who have had to leave private rented homes as they’re just priced out, and they can’t find anywhere else,” said Lisabel Miles, housing policy manager at Age UK.
“There’s going to be a lot of older renters emerging into retirement with real concerns about where they can go.”
