Middle Age and Older Women Experiencing Homelessness or Precarious Housing: Challenges and Opportunities in Addressing their Physical and Mental Health

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About this Research Topic

Submission deadlines

  1. Manuscript Summary Submission Deadline 4 April 2025 | Manuscript Submission Deadline 6 June 2025

  2. This Research Topic is still accepting articles.

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Background

Historically both older persons and women experiencing homelessness have been somewhat “hidden populations” given their greater avoidance of the formal shelter system and a reliance of with family or friends, rough sleeping, and/or remaining in unsafe living conditions, often under the threat of violence. These two groups’ spatial invisibility (or absence from public view) has contributed to their invisibility in policy, practice, and research focused on homelessness prevention and intervention. With their numbers rising globally however the plights of these two populations are gaining public attention. Yet, although research focused separately on older persons or women experiencing solo homelessness is growing, there is scant research exploring the intersection of age and gender in the homeless experience. Or restated, few studies exist exploring the question, “What does it mean to be a woman,in your fifties or older, struggling financially, and precariously housed or without a home?”

As noted by the UN, homelessness is one of the crudest manifestations of poverty, discrimination, and inequality. Many regard housing, a social determinant of health, as the linchpin of wellbeing. Thus, we seek manuscripts that, using an intersectionality lens, deepen our understanding of older women’s (OW) pathways into homelessness, their journeys of living with precarious housing, as well as pathways to safe, secure and stable housing. We recognize that OW experiencing homelessness are not a monolithic group and nations differ in their social, political, cultural and economic institutions as well as environmental conditions, all factors that affect the ways in which homelessness is experienced. Globally homelessness may also encompass not only shelter use, rough sleeping, and doubling up with family but also pavement dwelling, squatting in derelict buildings, and refugee camp living. Thus, we welcome manuscripts that bring different foci, perspectives, and methodologies to exploring the ways in which OW’s homelessness is often derived cumulative disadvantage based on the gendered nature of their experiences as well as emerging interventions that seek to prevent or break the homelessness cycle.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• The direct or indirect association of housing challenges (i.e., homelessness, precarious housing, substandard housing, housing affordability struggles,) with middle-and older- aged women’s physical, cognitive and/or mental health.

• The phenomena (or the mechanisms) by which the often-harsh living conditions of homelessness can lead to accelerated aging, early onsets of geriatric conditions, and early mortality for women experiencing homelessness.

• The structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal factors that shape older women pathways into precarious or instable housing/homelessness including their (in)ability to access healthcare and/or obtain safe and stable housing.

• Additional social identities/group memberships (i.e., race, religion, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigrant status) that create greater risk or unique challenges for women experiencing homelessness in mid- or later-life.

• Innovative healthcare and housing interventions (i.e. age- and gender- sensitive, trauma-informed) that might prevent older women’s homelessness and/or mitigate the negative health effects experienced by those currently faced with inadequate, unsafe, and insecure housing.

• The identification of needed policy reforms to prevent and/or eliminate housing challenges for women across the life course.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

  • Brief Research Report
  • Case Report
  • Classification
  • Clinical Trial
  • Data Report
  • Editorial
  • General Commentary
  • Hypothesis and Theory
  • Methods

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

  • Brief Research Report
  • Case Report
  • Classification
  • Clinical Trial
  • Data Report
  • Editorial
  • General Commentary
  • Hypothesis and Theory
  • Methods
  • Mini Review
  • Opinion
  • Original Research
  • Perspective
  • Review
  • Study Protocol
  • Systematic Review
  • Technology and Code

Keywords: older women, middle aged women, housing, homelessness, precarious housing, instable housing

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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