What Happens When You Lose Your Home At 72? - (WGBH)

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What Happens When You Lose Your Home At 72? Priced Out. Older, female & unhoused. GBH News, Jan. 9, 2023. -Ed.

Judith spent most of 2022 living in her Volvo because she was unable to find an apartment she could afford. (VIDEO Below). As an early August sun rose over Newburyport, 72-year-old Judith bought a cup of coffee at a drive-thru & continued across the street to St. Mary’s Cemetery. She pulled up her Volvo SUV near a water spigot among the headstones, & got out to wash her neck & shake out her bedding. It was a morning routine she’d established months prior after she was evicted from her apartment, & began living in her car as she struggled to find a new place she could afford. As winter wore on, she found snow easier to live with than the cold rains of March. And as summer arrived, she used mosquito netting so she could leave her car windows open at night.

And as the 2nd winter in the car approached, Judith tried to be stoic: she insulated the car windows from the cold, & slept under layers with a hat & thick socks. But, she admitted, despair had crept in.

Judith, who didn’t want her last name used citing privacy, called herself “fortunate enough to have a vehicle to sleep in.'' She pointed to the cemetery, where she’d seen other people experiencing homelessness, including, she said, a woman her age, living among the trees. But she never got close enough to talk. “I don’t think it’s polite anyway,” she said. ”You have to maintain some kind of dignity even if you’re living in a tent in the woods.” An established artist who has taught painting & worked in museums, Judith said she was financially dependent on her husband to help raise their children. After his death 20 years ago, she said she continued to make a modest living selling paintings & working part-time jobs.

The line between being housed & unhoused was thin for Judith for many of the same reasons it is for other older women: a low-paying career, time spent out of the workforce to care for family, & financial dependence on a spouse who died. Record rents in Massachusetts have made the hold on housing even more tenuous.
* Related Stories:
- After years of waiting, renters with Section 8 vouchers encounter illegal discrimination
- Erasing prior evictions could help renters land apartments
- A no-fault eviction sends a Weymouth teacher to the brink of homelessness

Massachusetts has a high number of elderly renters, & many older women are struggling, according to Jan Mutchler, who directs the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston. The institute found that 64% of single women ages 65 & older in Massachusetts are economically insecure — the highest percentage of any state in the country. “In Massachusetts, the cost of living, & in particular the cost of housing, is so expensive that it’s a much bigger struggle & impacts many more older women in Massachusetts than in other states,” said Mutchler. The struggle is worse for women of color. Nationwide, more than three- quarters of Latina women, 67% of Black women & 62% of Asian women aged 65 or older experience economic insecurity, according to the Gerontology Institute. Women of color are also more likely to be cost-burdened by rent...https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2023/01/09/what-happens-when-you-lose-your-home-at-72
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'GBH News Launches New Multiplatform Series Priced Out: The Fight For Housing in Massachusetts,' June 7, 2022.

BOSTON – As the cost of housing in Massachusetts continues to skyrocket, GBH News is launching a new multiplatform series looking at how the housing crisis has moved beyond Boston into communities across the state once considered affordable. Priced Out: The Fight for Housing in Massachusetts will give voice to individuals & families struggling to stay in their homes in East Boston, Lynn, Brockton & Worcester.

U.S. Census data shows that between 2011 and 2021, single-family home values increased more than 200% in East Boston, 150% in Lynn, 150% in Brockton, & 100% in Worcester. Priced Out will put the focus on how those rising values attract welcome investment even as they force longtime residents into an increasingly elusive search for a new place to live...More, https://www.wgbh.org/foundation/press/gbh-news-launches-new-multiplatform-series-priced-out-the-fight-for-housing-in-massachusetts
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- Judith's story. (7 mins.)