Homelessness and Elderly Persons: Issues, Vulnerabilities and Possibilities

Growing numbers of elderly persons becoming homeless is alarming yet the issue remains invisible. Such is the prejudice towards the homeless that their original identity is just lost. Be it a person with mental illness or abandoned woman or a destitute elderly, none of them retain an identity of who they are but that of a homeless. This paper attempts to examine the situation and understand the reasons resulting in the elderly becoming homeless and the challenges they face while on the streets. The paper has used ‘real-life’ situations of elderly homeless in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Nagpur, Patna and Lucknow. The phenomenon is a two way where the elderly not only becoming homeless but homeless citizens growing old on the streets. People living as homeless for years, finding no interventions and ageing on the streets add to the issue. With age, their physical capacity to face the hostilities of street life is restricted. Unfortunately, in the modern world, an individual's relevance is linked with a person’s capacity to be productive in the material sense of the word, including the approach followed in rehab processes. This makes the elderly homeless as one of the worst victims of urbanisation and the resultant culture. Abuse and neglect rule the lives of the elderly homeless. Being homeless or elderly are situations where one is vulnerable but being a homeless elderly is extended vulnerability and suffering.