Abstract
The following is Karen’s lived experience, as shared with Skye. Karen’s experiences of ongoing housing insecurity and homelessness, like many older single women,1 have been due to low income, relationship breakdown, intimate partner violence, and mental health. For Karen, this has meant that she has relied on unsafe and substandard housing options such as rooming houses. Karen has also spent time sleeping in her car and travelling between various locations and different accommodation options, trying to find safe and secure shelter. Karen has now found stability through social housing. Karen wants to be able to share this new stability with her adult children through rebuilding her relationship with them and offering them a housing safety net. Karen feels limited in this as she is only eligible for a single bedroom in social housing. Current policies do not consider how parenting roles continue for older single women with adult children, and how these might affect their housing needs.