On Human Rights Day, the theme “Our Everyday Essentials” is intended to serve as a reminder: housing is not merely a commodity, but a basic human right. Yet across Australia, a growing number of older people are finding that right slipping out of reach.
The country’s housing crisis is often framed around first-home buyers and younger families, but the fastest-rising rates of housing stress are appearing later in life. Many older Australians, particularly women who have spent years working, caring and raising families, are confronting the unthinkable prospect of homelessness for the first time.
In the past decade, the population of older Australians living in private rentals has surged by 73 per cent, reaching about 700,000 people. Meanwhile, median rents have climbed nearly 44 per cent in just five years. What was once manageable is now impossible for many to sustain.
The strain is showing in frontline services. In the 2024–25 financial year, more than 31,700 people aged 55 and over sought help from a government-funded homelessness service — an increase of more than 2,000 people in a single year. Workers in the sector say they routinely hear stories of older tenants skipping medication, selling possessions or couch-surfing just to keep a roof overhead.
While governments have begun to respond, advocates say the scale of the challenge demands collective action well beyond public policy. Increasingly, it is philanthropists and charitable organisations that are helping fill the gaps.
Equity Trustees is directing a rising share of its grants towards organisations supporting older people at risk of losing their homes. Susie Meagher, Grantmaking and Social Impact Specialist at Equity Trustees, says The Wicking Trust, administered by the organisation, is one example of a fund that has chosen to prioritise the needs of older Australians.
“Our role at Equity Trustees is to ensure these worthy initiatives receive the support they need – in accordance with philanthropists’ wishes,” Meagher says.
Some of the initiatives supported through Equity Trustees target different points of the problem: from emergency accommodation to long-term affordable housing, to research that identifies the structural drivers of homelessness in later life.
Among them is Wintringham, a non-profit that has spent more than three decades supporting people aged 50 and over who are homeless or living in precarious housing. There is also the Older Persons Homelessness Prevention Project — a partnership between Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) and the University of Adelaide, which works to prevent homelessness before it begins. Women’s Property Initiatives, another recipient, focuses on permanent, affordable homes for women and children escaping housing insecurity.
For Meagher, these efforts are part of a broader recognition that secure housing underpins dignity, health and social connection for people as they age.
“By honouring philanthropists’ wishes and helping to ensure these organisations receive the funding they need, Equity Trustees is supporting these organisations to continue doing their essential work in helping older Australians access secure housing – an everyday essential human right,” she says.
The challenge ahead remains immense. But for the thousands of older Australians navigating a housing landscape that has shifted beneath them, the support of charities and philanthropic trusts is becoming not just a supplement to the system — but a lifeline.
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