This past week I’ve spent ample time contemplating where I would like to go with my topic, and I have narrowed my scope down to looking at homelessness among the senior women who are widows.

I’m sure there is a much more elegant way to describe my topic, but at this stage I am just happy that a string of words that I’m putting together can produce an image in the minds of those who hear/hear it. This topic is something that I’m running in to more and more in my personal and professional life. As housing becomes increasingly less affordable, the social support available is stagnant, and the population continues to age, we are running into a reality where single senior (especially widows who are reliant on survivor’s pension) are not able to affordable any type of housing.

After the group session, I have walked away with much more confidence and excitement about my topic. Everyone had great insights on how to approach expanding my topic which really helped me feel less stiff about all of this. From the session I think I want to look more into the gaps in data rather than trying to pinpoint a service or framework that would support these women. This is mainly due to the fact that it is well-reported that the women drain every avenue possible before ending up as people who are hidden homeless or sleeping in shelters. I need to almost do a jurisdictional scan and literature review before I really commit to the purpose and end-goal.

My plan for this is to block off some hours of the day to look at how certain jurisdictions categorise their homeless population and what financial supports retired seniors have at their disposal. Hopefully this will narrow something down!

Week 4 — Reigning in my topic / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society (2022-2023) by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0