A three-year pilot program has been launched to help provide urgently needed homeless accommodation for older Western Australians.
Sleeping in cars and couch-surfing has become a reality for a growing number of Western Australians, including pensioners.
A non-government community services provider, MercyCare, is piloting a three-year program in Wembley to help provide urgently needed accommodation that bridges the gap.
The Way Home initiative has created five transitional residential units for people over the age of 65 who are experiencing homelessness or the threat of homelessness.
The homelessness problem among Australia’s ageing population is growing. In Western Australia, research conducted in 2021 by Shelter WA found that people aged over 55, particularly women, comprised the fastest growing group of the state’s homeless population.
Nationally about 12,500 people experiencing homelessness in 2006 in Australia were aged 55 or older. The number jumped to 19,400 by 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
“The growing need among older West[ern] Australians on a fixed income for secure and stable accommodation is compounded by the severe shortage of social and affordable housing across WA,” MercyCare executive director Jennie Burns said.
“These homeless older adults could be your parents or your grandparents, they could still be working or could be on the pension. Instead of having a safe place to call home they are sleeping in their car, couch surfing or living in unstable and often unsafe accommodation.”
Priority waitlists for social housing are getting longer, with protracted wait times much longer than the three months that used to be typical.
“Even if you’re an older West Australian on the priority waitlist for social housing, the wait can be well over 12 months or more, often up to 18 months,” Ms Burns said.
“With more than 20,000 West[ern] Australians on the social housing waitlist it has been very rewarding to transform units that were sitting empty into places where vulnerable West[ern] Australians can stay until they find their way to a permanent home.”
The latest annual Rental Affordability Index, released in November 2024, revealed that rental affordability in the greater Perth area had fallen into the ‘unaffordable’ category for the first time.
Before 2020, Perth was the most affordable capital city but now ranks alongside Sydney as the least affordable in the country.
Although Commonwealth Rent Assistance helps many older Australians with the costs of renting, about two in five older people receiving this payment were in rental stress, according to a 2021-22 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Douglas and Paul are two Western Australians who are part of MercyCare’s three-year pilot program. Each tenant can live in their unit for up to 18 months while on their path to securing long-term accommodation stability.
Seventy-nine-year-old part-time meteorologist Douglas spent five months living out of his car after increased cost-of-living stresses and mounting financial pressures forced him to sell his home of 30 years.
After receiving rent increases, retired construction supervisor Paul (75) was forced to leave the one-bedroom North Perth apartment he’d lived in for seven years so the landlord could sell.
“We have already seen fantastic outcomes with our tenants experiencing significantly improved health and wellbeing and the positive impacts are being noticed by their family, friends and health professionals,” Ms Burns said.
For Douglas, The Way Home Program ended months spent searching for public facilities with hot water so he could shave, spending hours in public libraries or a McDonald’s so he could work on his laptop and unsuccessfully applying for affordable accommodation.
“I’d been sleeping in my car for five months and the situation was becoming depressing. Everyone is under accommodation stress so even family and friends weren’t able to help me with more than a night or two here or there,” Douglas said.
Paul, too, is grateful to have a roof over his head thanks to The Way Home program.
“If it wasn’t for MercyCare I would have ended up on the streets,” Paul said. “Having eighteen months to think about what I want to do next and reconnect with my family has given me some stability and I am enormously grateful.”
Part of MercyCare’s Intergenerational Campus in Wembley, the units were once home to the Sisters of Mercy who came to WA 175 years ago with the aim of creating a more equal, compassionate and caring outlook.
