This research was commissioned by The Salvation Army Australia Southern Territory in response to the growing number of women entering the welfare system late in life due to insufficient capital resources and income to provide for their retirement.

Please follow this link for the full document 

http://www.sisr.net/Flagships/documents/No_home_at_the_end_of_the_road_2011.pdf

The research specifically set out to test whether there was market for a new housing product based on a land trust model in which single women over 40 yo would be willing and able to contribute at least $150,000 to the cost of development. The research found that women earning above average incomes in this cohort were rightly pessimistic about their capacity to purchase housing in the market and about their ability to accrue a sufficient nest egg for retirement - the surprise was that most of them were not saving at all. This finding is highly significant as it means that we can expect the number of single older women at risk of homelessness in their retirement to be far higher than previously forecast.

The irony is that these women have considerable disposable incomes today and want to purchase housing but no one is currently willing to sell them housing. This latent equity however is an opportunity for social housing developers who are in need of capital.