Housing Instability and Elder Mistreatment: How a Growing Movement Addresses Two Intersecting Issues

The PDF in which this article appear  can be found in Bifocal Vol. 46 Issue 4.

Valerie is a 78 year old woman who has lived in her home for decades. After her husband died two years ago, Valerie began spending time on a Facebook bereavement group, where she met Jeff, who said he was also grieving the loss of his wife. Valerie begins messaging with Jeff for hours, and believes she has found a second chance at love. She is so preoccupied by this new romance, that she says nothing when her nephew Sam, who started out dropping by to help out around the house, starts sleeping in a spare bedroom. Mysterious charges begin appearing on her credit card and pills for her hip pain begin disappearing from the medicine cabinet. But Sam helps with shopping and minor home repairs, which Valerie doesn’t know how she would manage alone. She loses herself in long text conversations with Jeff, who just needs to pay off some debt so he can leave the city where he currently lives and finally join her. She calls the bank to learn more about a second mortgage on her house and is surprised to learn her account is overdrawn.

As Valerie’s story illustrates, elder abuse most frequently happens at home or directly causes housing instability. According to an October 2023 report issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services, older adults are the fastest growing age group of those experiencing homelessness, composing nearly half of the homeless population, with that number expected to triple by 2030. While some older adults may have experienced chronic housing instability for decades, many older adults are facing homelessness for the first time. In 2021, two thirds of the people over age 65 entering homeless shelters were doing so for the first time in their lives. Many of the recognized risk factors for housing instability and homelessness, such as medical, functional or cognitive decline and loss of financial independence or control over finances, are also risk factors for elder abuse. Research suggests that elder abuse itself may be an overlooked risk factor for homelessness among older adults.

Older adults experiencing harm and the professionals working to support them often see a need for temporary housing options where older adults can be safe while simultaneously receiving multilayered services to address the harm they have experienced and begin to heal. Domestic violence and homeless shelters are often ill-suited to this population, as they cannot address the medical needs common to many older adults and are nearly impossible to navigate for older adults with cognitive impairment. Equally important, professionals in these settings typically do not have the expertise to address the unique needs of older adults who have experienced this type of harm.2

Over the last two decades, the elder justice shelter movement has proliferated organically and through localized grassroots efforts in response to this gap in service. For example, The Weinberg Center for Elder Justice at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, a safe haven program within a skilled nursing facility, opened in 2005 as a result of the Hebrew Home’s CEO meeting a former elder abuse prosecutor, who shared the story of crime victims forced to remain living with the person who caused them harm because they had nowhere else to go. As the Weinberg Center grew and developed, other communities began reaching out to learn how to adapt this model to their own location’s unique needs and resources. In 2013, the SPRiNG Alliance, a professional network of shelter programs, was created by the Weinberg Center to provide peer support to these programs throughout North America. Still, the programs remained community driven and locally focused, each with its own origin story unique to the circumstances of the community it would come to serve.

"Need, Access, Impact and Opportunities: Findings from a Multi-Site Evaluation of Elder Justice Shelters in the U.S.” is a 2024 report summarizing findings from a two-year project conducted by The New York Academy of Medicine in partnership with the Weinberg Center and supported by an Elder Justice Innovation grant from the Administration for Community Living (ACL).[7] The report includes findings from interviews with stakeholders—including staff, clients, community-based referral partners, and Adult Protective Services (APS)—affiliated with elder justice shelter programs in diverse communities ranging from New York City to Colorado Springs, CO.