Late-Life Homelessness: Experiences of Disadvantage and Unequal Aging

Amanda Grenier

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Late-Life Homelessness

Experiences of Disadvantage and Unequal Aging

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2022

About this book

Around the world and across a range of contexts, homelessness among older people is on the rise. In spite of growing media attention and new academic research on the issue, older people often remain unrecognized as a subpopulation in public policy, programs, and homeless strategies. As such, they occupy a paradoxical position of being hypervisible while remaining overlooked.

Late-Life Homelessness is the first Canadian book to address this often neglected issue. Basing her analysis on a four-year ethnographic study of late-life homelessness in Montreal, Canada, Amanda Grenier uses a critical gerontological perspective to explore life at the intersection of aging and homelessness. She draws attention to disadvantage over time and how the condition of being unhoused disrupts a person’s ability to age in place, resulting in experiences of unequal aging. Weaving together findings from policy documents, stakeholder insights, and observations and interviews with older people, this book demonstrates how structures, organizational practices, and relationships related to homelessness and aging come to shape late life.

Situated in the context of an aging population, rising inequality, and declining social commitments, Late-Life Homelessness stresses the moral imperative of responding justly to the needs of older people as a means of mitigating the unequal aging of unhoused elders.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Amanda Grenier Amanda Grenier is professor and Norman and Honey Schipper Chair in Gerontological Social Work at the University of Toronto and Baycrest Hospital.

Reviews

"Amanda Grenier critically and intelligently unpacks how declining social commitments and responses has led to disadvantage that culminates in unequal aging. This book is a clarion call to pay attention to an issue many refuse to acknowledge: the growing group of aging homeless Canadians. The scholarship and methodology used are exceptional. In fact, it is one of the best ethnographies I have read in a long time." Kelli Stajduhar, University of Victoria

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Front Matter
i

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Contents
v

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Tables and Figures
vii

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Acknowledgments
ix

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Context, Frame, and Methodology
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Setting the Context
3

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The State of Knowledge on Late-Life Homelessness
23

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A Critical Perspective and Ethnographic Approach to Late-life Homelessness
44

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Project Insights from Four Thematic Angles
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Age and Late-Life Homelessness
69

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The Places of Late-Life Homelessness: Aging in “Undesirable” Locations
99

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Late-Life Homelessness as a Reflection of Disadvantage over Time
127

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Late-Life Homelessness as Social Exclusion and Abandonment
157

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Directions for Change
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The Need to Prevent Homelessness across the Life Course and into Late Life
187

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The Moral Imperative: Political and Just Responses to Late-Life Homelessness
215

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Canadian Definition of Homelessness
243

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Comparative Table of Older People with Lived Experience
245

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Notes
247

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References
265

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Index
329

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Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

June 27, 2023

eBook ISBN:

9780228009535

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Main content:

272

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780228009535

eBook ISBN: 9780228009535

Keywords for this book

Homeless; unhomed; Housing; Shelter; Older People; Aging; Life course; Inequality; Disadvantage; Vulnerability; Insecurity; Risk; Uncertainty; Space; Place; City; Studies; Gerontology; Critical; Social; Qualitative Research; Ethnography; Everyday Lives; Lived Experience; Stories; Resilience; Strength; Structure; Agency; precarious

Audience(s) for this book

For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research

Mcgill-queen's University Press

Late-Life Homelessness

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Front Matter

Contents

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Setting the Context

The State of Knowledge on Late-Life Homelessness

A Critical Perspective and Ethnographic Approach to Late-life Homelessness

Age and Late-Life Homelessness

The Places of Late-Life Homelessness: Aging in “Undesirable” Locations

Late-Life Homelessness as a Reflection of Disadvantage over Time

Late-Life Homelessness as Social Exclusion and Abandonment

The Need to Prevent Homelessness across the Life Course and into Late Life

The Moral Imperative: Political and Just Responses to Late-Life Homelessness

Canadian Definition of Homelessness

Comparative Table of Older People with Lived Experience

Notes

References

Index

Bibliographic data