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Wayne State pilot study helps get homeless women back on track Left: Dona Tatum lost everything, but found new hope as part of a Wayne State pilot study program. |
By Cheryl Deep
You grab your purse, lock the door and head to the grocery store. When you return a few hours later, your family home is gone, reduced to glowing cinders and ash.
Months earlier, you had let your homeowner’s insurance lapse temporarily to save a little cash. You have nothing now except the groceries in your arms. For two days you sit on the home’s cement stoop paralyzed with shock and grief.
You are 53, female and homeless.
You suffered a severe back injury in your 30s and are disabled, barely providing for yourself and your teenage daughter. When your daughter turns 18, your social security benefit goes down and your rent goes up. Within months, you can’t pay your bills. The landlord sympathizes but must evict you.
You are 51, female and homeless.
The face of homelessness in Detroit is increasingly female, over 50, and African American. It is a face not marred by mental illness or addiction but deeply disturbed by the shock of no longer having walls and a roof, an address, a neighborhood, a place to call home.
As one 59-year-old woman recalls from her homeless months, “Every day I asked myself why am I here? Where do I belong?”
Wayne State University researchers Drs. David Moxley and Olivia Washington have studied this face for years, exploring ways to move homeless older women back into housing or, better still, prevent them from losing their home during financially difficult times.
“We have a responsibility to identify at-risk women and create an early-warning system,” said Dr. Moxley, a professor in the School of Social Work. “We want to catch Humpty before he falls off the wall.”
Losing a residence, even temporarily, creates a homeless mindset. Women label themselves as failures, lose status and suffer depression. The longer they are homeless, the harsher the damage. Women who are older and homeless are especially vulnerable. They combat abuse, violence, chronic illness, family rejection, feelings of invisibility and identity loss.
Street life ages these women prematurely. At 50, their physical condition resembles a 60-year-old’s. High blood pressure, arthritis and respiratory problems prevail.
Not only are they shunned by stable neighborhoods, they have few chances to connect with other homeless women where they could share their story and receive support.
“They want to be part of something,” said Dr. Moxley, “but feel like pariahs.”
“Support groups and what we call ‘intentional communities’ could provide the glue and framework to piece these women’s lives back together,” said Dr. Washington, an associate professor with Wayne State’s School of Nursing and the Institute of Gerontology. “The group of eight women in our pilot program wrote poems and journals, sewed a quilt, took photos and shared their stories in ways we as researchers would never have imagined. Without a home, women must reinvent themselves and their hope from the inside out.”
Drs. Washington and Moxley have conducted two major investigations into homelessness: a 2001 study of 100 women to determine demographics and causes; and an on-going pilot study of eight women to test the effectiveness of various interventions in preventing and reversing homelessness.
With a combined 60 years of working in the field, Drs. Washington and Moxley say the risk factors for homelessness in older women are predictable: being African American (40-50% of our nation’s homeless are black), living in poverty (about 47% of black women aged 65 to 74 live in poverty), having no spouse or significant other, chronic illness, children unable to help (sometimes the adult child is disabled), and a sudden traumatic loss such as a death in the family, major theft or losing the home to fire.
If a woman is being violently abused by a spouse or partner, she may choose homelessness to escape the life-threatening abuse.
“This is not a scam,” said Dr. Washington. “It’s real people with real problems – and it could be any one of us.”
Older women who enter the homeless spiral, stay there an average of 16 months. If job loss triggered an eviction or foreclosure, the loss of a permanent address makes job hunting and receiving social services even harder.
Even women lucky enough to find space in a shelter are dislocated from their neighborhood and social support network. They have no phone or transportation to stay connected to friends, relatives or job opportunities. They may suffer from depression and severe feelings of low self-worth. While women often slip into homelessness suddenly, climbing back out of the homeless trap can take months of hard work.
Dona Tatum was in her mid-50s when she lost her 10-room home to a raging fire. The home had been left to her by her mother who had been a special education teacher and inspired Dona to write as a child. The loss of the home was both material and sentimental. It crushed her.
Dr. Washington recruited Dona into her pilot study where she began to resurrect herself by writing poetry. After months of setbacks, both Dona and her poetry found a home. She flew to Washington, D.C. this summer to be inducted into the International Society of Poets and receive a silver trophy award for poetic achievement. “When everything on the outside disappeared, it was just me, my suffering and God,” Dona says. “Plus the poems I wrote on scraps of paper and kept in a shoebox. I am back on track now and I am grateful.”
Dona and other women in the pilot study agree that creative expression can heal life’s wounds. They want to share their wisdom and hope by one day displaying their creations at the Detroit Institute of Art in an exhibit titled simply “Telling My Story.”
“We are the pioneers,” said Dona. “We want to inspire every homeless woman, young or old, to climb out of the pit and back into life. Take our hands and we’ll pull you up.”
You grab your purse, lock the door and head to the grocery store. When you return a few hours later, your family home is gone, reduced to glowing cinders and ash.
Months earlier, you had let your homeowner’s insurance lapse temporarily to save a little cash. You have nothing now except the groceries in your arms. For two days you sit on the home’s cement stoop paralyzed with shock and grief.
You are 53, female and homeless.
You suffered a severe back injury in your 30s and are disabled, barely providing for yourself and your teenage daughter. When your daughter turns 18, your social security benefit goes down and your rent goes up. Within months, you can’t pay your bills. The landlord sympathizes but must evict you.
You are 51, female and homeless.
The face of homelessness in Detroit is increasingly female, over 50, and African American. It is a face not marred by mental illness or addiction but deeply disturbed by the shock of no longer having walls and a roof, an address, a neighborhood, a place to call home.
As one 59-year-old woman recalls from her homeless months, “Every day I asked myself why am I here? Where do I belong?”
Wayne State University researchers Drs. David Moxley and Olivia Washington have studied this face for years, exploring ways to move homeless older women back into housing or, better still, prevent them from losing their home during financially difficult times.
“We have a responsibility to identify at-risk women and create an early-warning system,” said Dr. Moxley, a professor in the School of Social Work. “We want to catch Humpty before he falls off the wall.”
Losing a residence, even temporarily, creates a homeless mindset. Women label themselves as failures, lose status and suffer depression. The longer they are homeless, the harsher the damage. Women who are older and homeless are especially vulnerable. They combat abuse, violence, chronic illness, family rejection, feelings of invisibility and identity loss.
Street life ages these women prematurely. At 50, their physical condition resembles a 60-year-old’s. High blood pressure, arthritis and respiratory problems prevail.
Not only are they shunned by stable neighborhoods, they have few chances to connect with other homeless women where they could share their story and receive support.
“They want to be part of something,” said Dr. Moxley, “but feel like pariahs.”
“Support groups and what we call ‘intentional communities’ could provide the glue and framework to piece these women’s lives back together,” said Dr. Washington, an associate professor with Wayne State’s School of Nursing and the Institute of Gerontology. “The group of eight women in our pilot program wrote poems and journals, sewed a quilt, took photos and shared their stories in ways we as researchers would never have imagined. Without a home, women must reinvent themselves and their hope from the inside out.”
Drs. Washington and Moxley have conducted two major investigations into homelessness: a 2001 study of 100 women to determine demographics and causes; and an on-going pilot study of eight women to test the effectiveness of various interventions in preventing and reversing homelessness.
With a combined 60 years of working in the field, Drs. Washington and Moxley say the risk factors for homelessness in older women are predictable: being African American (40-50% of our nation’s homeless are black), living in poverty (about 47% of black women aged 65 to 74 live in poverty), having no spouse or significant other, chronic illness, children unable to help (sometimes the adult child is disabled), and a sudden traumatic loss such as a death in the family, major theft or losing the home to fire.
If a woman is being violently abused by a spouse or partner, she may choose homelessness to escape the life-threatening abuse.
“This is not a scam,” said Dr. Washington. “It’s real people with real problems – and it could be any one of us.”
Older women who enter the homeless spiral, stay there an average of 16 months. If job loss triggered an eviction or foreclosure, the loss of a permanent address makes job hunting and receiving social services even harder.
Even women lucky enough to find space in a shelter are dislocated from their neighborhood and social support network. They have no phone or transportation to stay connected to friends, relatives or job opportunities. They may suffer from depression and severe feelings of low self-worth. While women often slip into homelessness suddenly, climbing back out of the homeless trap can take months of hard work.
Dona Tatum was in her mid-50s when she lost her 10-room home to a raging fire. The home had been left to her by her mother who had been a special education teacher and inspired Dona to write as a child. The loss of the home was both material and sentimental. It crushed her.
Dr. Washington recruited Dona into her pilot study where she began to resurrect herself by writing poetry. After months of setbacks, both Dona and her poetry found a home. She flew to Washington, D.C. this summer to be inducted into the International Society of Poets and receive a silver trophy award for poetic achievement. “When everything on the outside disappeared, it was just me, my suffering and God,” Dona says. “Plus the poems I wrote on scraps of paper and kept in a shoebox. I am back on track now and I am grateful.”
Dona and other women in the pilot study agree that creative expression can heal life’s wounds. They want to share their wisdom and hope by one day displaying their creations at the Detroit Institute of Art in an exhibit titled simply “Telling My Story.”
“We are the pioneers,” said Dona. “We want to inspire every homeless woman, young or old, to climb out of the pit and back into life. Take our hands and we’ll pull you up.”
Cheryl Deep works in media relations for Wayne State's Institute of Gerontology. For more information, contact her via e-mail
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 These quilts were created by women in the WSU pilot study. |