Shelter for seniors: Calgary senior on surviving a year without a home

Many seniors battle the cost-of-living crisis leaving them at constant risk of being unable to keep a roof over their head.

Hundreds who reach out for help find nothing available in their price range and discouraging wait lists for more affordable options. We talk to a woman who ended up homeless for her first time — as a senior.

This is the second in a 660 NewsRadio five-part series, ‘Shelter for Seniors Facing Homelessness; Stories from Calgary,’ where reporter Nadia Moharib explores how the cost-of-living crisis is forcing more elderly Calgarians to live on the cusp of homelessness.

Part 1: Less than 2% of hundreds of seniors looking for housing in the first half of 2024 find it

Calgary senior shares her ordeal of surviving a year without a home

After the end of a long-term relationship, Faye found herself living in her truck. When it broke down and was towed, she pitched a tent. 

As autumn turned to winter, the 70-year-old found shelter where she could. In a tent, on the floor of boarded up houses between luxury infills and sometimes under a tarp — all while trying to find an affordable home. 

“When you are homeless each day is a struggle, a real struggle,” she says. 

With Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security payments, Faye still couldn’t afford anything. And shelters felt degrading. 

“It’s like a cattle line. They are pushing you through line-ups for food and lineups for showers and lineups to get medication. And you sleep on the floor on mats,” she explains. ”They search you, they lock your stuff up. If you want to degrade yourself, to be a number there it is. I found it very depressing and embarrassing.. I’ve never been this low in society. The bottom rung, scum.”

Living outdoors wasn’t much better but for different reasons. There’s no running water, it’s terrifyingly cold in winter and there is always the danger of being attacked, especially as a woman, perhaps, more so as a senior.

While some people helped. Others judged. 

“A lot of people are snobby towards the homeless. It’s like, ‘This could be you tomorrow,’” Faye says. 

More than 35,000 people are homeless on any given night in Canada, according to the Federal Housing Advocate’s Review of Housing. Up to a quarter find shelter in an encampment and those older than age 65 make up just under four per cent of those people.

After a brutal year on the streets, Faye landed a subsidized one-bedroom apartment — no more dragging around a cart filled with her belongings and sleeping with one eye open.

A place to call your own is something many take for granted but what Faye dreamt of for more than a year.

“Emotionally it’s overwhelming,” she says of signing her lease. “I cried because I’m going to have my own home again.”

The senior knows homeless people each have unique stories and addictions, mental health issues and laziness are not always to blame. Faye once assumed that, too. Now she knows better. 

Often it’s a devastating combination of poverty and a lack of affordable housing options.

And she’s proud of surviving an ordeal she never imagined she would even face.

“I used to walk around with my head down. I was so ashamed to be homeless,” she says. “Now, I don’t. I’m not gonna let other people’s opinions affect how I feel about myself.”

“There’s a huge hope that I’ll never have to experience this again.”

If you have any feedback on this series please email nadia.moharib@rci.rogers.com.