Maria sits in a dim living room with the lights off. It’s late afternoon on a bleak June day and the 65-year-old grandmother dons a cardigan over the jumper she is wearing to stay warm. In another room of the private rental in suburban Lower Hutt is her flatmate. Maria is an unpaid caregiver to the 74-year-old woman with physical and mental health needs.
Their landlord is about to put the rent of $580 up by $60 a week and Maria (not her real name) – a mother of four adult children – wonders how the pensioners will afford it. They’ve already limited their heating as much as they can and turn all unnecessary lights off to save money, but the power bill, along with other expenses, remains high and their food budget is down to the bare minimum.
For a tightly controlled $180 a month, Maria buys bread discounted after its best-before date at 50 cents a loaf, which she freezes for toast, and meat on special. Fruit is too expensive but a meal – usually only one a day – might include frozen mixed vegetables.
By 4.30pm, Maria has already eaten that day’s meal. At lunchtime, the flatmates ate precooked sausages – one for her and two for the older woman.
“I go to the supermarket once a month. I get meat that’s cheaper because it’s older and then I freeze it. If you see meat with a red sticker, you go for it because if you don’t, someone else is going to grab it real quick.
This is the face of female poverty in retirement: cheap food, rationed, in a cold rental house. The Massey University retirement income calculations talk of “no frills” options, and like Maria, for many women “no frills” would be better described as “threadbare”. When women reach 65, they’re likely to be well behind men in liquid and fixed assets, a gap that widens as the years go by.
A gender lens has been applied to many aspects of women’s lives but some aspects have been overlooked, like what happens to women in retirement, particularly those whose sole income is NZ Super, like Maria.
It has long been known that women earn less over their working lives because of lower rates of pay, their dominance in lower-paid industries and time out of the paid workforce for family commitments.
The haves and have-nots
Housing is a huge determinant in how women fare as they age, especially if they’re single or widowed. Women who leave the workforce without their own home and enter retirement as private renters are more likely to struggle than the homeowners who have housing security. It can become a case of the haves and have-nots, and for the seniors hoping to move into subsidised social housing, that can be a postcode lottery.
“The gender pay gap turns into the gender pension and gender retirement gap,” says Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson. A report by her commission put women 36% behind men in KiwiSaver balances at retirement. With the inescapable facts that women in New Zealand live longer too and are statistically more likely to be single at the end of their lives, they’re already having to make less go further.
Throw in a life shock – a leaky home, loss of a home or business, or a mid-life divorce – and women typically have it tougher as they age.
Wrightson argues that anyone who wants to raise the pension age to 67 should think about the severe impact on older women. And she is concerned that the stereotype of a retiree is that “they’re a boomer, they’re relatively well off and they’re wandering around on European river cruises. That’s a nice life for just 2-4% of the retired population.”
The reality is that 40% of pensioners are living on the state super only, says Wrightson. And while most retirement village residents need to sell an asset, typically a house, to get in, “most people who are living in villages live relatively modestly”, Wrightson says. “There is the top 2-3% that live in enormously expensive ones. Those villages are generally in Auckland, occasionally in Queenstown. Most retirees live relatively modest lives and in relatively modest accommodation.”
According to the 2018 Census (2023 Census rates for this are not yet available), one in five retirees were still paying mortgages and another one in five were paying rent – that’s men and women. Over time, the number of pensioners renting a home is expected to more than double, so that by 2048, 4 in 10 of the over-65s will be paying rent – an estimated 600,000 New Zealanders.
Wrightson points out that superannuation was designed for older New Zealanders who owned their own homes and had paid off their mortgages or lived in affordable social housing. “Both those things are under challenge.”
Precarious for singles
The Selwyn Foundation, a registered charity that supports seniors with housing, services and advocacy, released a recent study which looked at the lives of the 75,600 single, older women (Pākehā over 65, Māori or Pasifika over 55) living in Auckland, Northland, Waikato and Taranaki. It found that three-quarters earned less than $30,000 a year, compared with an average of 68% of all women in that age group. (In comparison, a 40-hour week on the minimum wage is $48,152).
These vulnerable older women make up 29% of all women over 55 ‒ an “invisible population” that’s projected to grow, says Denise Cosgrove, chief executive of the Selwyn Foundation.
“Through our outreach work, we’re aware that single, older women are often living in precarious housing situations – sleeping in cars or on couches,” says Cosgrove. “One lady who moved into our Selwyn House shared-living residence on Auckland’s North Shore told us she’d lived in 30 different places in three years.”
It’s a national problem, according to Jill Hawkey, executive director of Christchurch Methodist Mission, the largest social housing provider in the South Island. The mission’s clients range from the homeless to those in emergency transitional housing and social housing.
“We are seeing more older people on the streets and often they will live in doorways, on church steps, somewhere where they think it is safe. Or they might go and crash at a friend’s place or relative’s place, or sleep on their couch.”
The numbers bear this out. Hawkey says those on the Ministry of Social Development’s housing register – essentially, a waiting list – have doubled for most age groups but tripled for the over-65s in her region. A third of people seeking emergency housing in Nelson and Blenheim are pensioners.
“It’s a global trend. The fastest rate of homelessness is among the elderly.”
One of the issues is that there are very few one-bedroom units around (they make up just 4% of the national housing stock), so two older women sharing a rental, like Maria and her friend, is increasingly common.
“Landlords might either put the rent up to a level where an elderly tenant can’t afford it on their superannuation or they sell, and when a retiree then looks for a one-bedroom place, they just can’t find it,” Hawkey says. “Try paying the rent for a two-bedroom place if you’re living alone and on superannuation.”
The mission operates WesleyCare, a complex offering homes, rest-home and hospital-level and palliative care in Papanui. To be a resident, you must be over 60 and either a renter or on the MSD housing register. It has 57 pensioner units – a mix of bedsits and one-bedroom units costing $150 to $230 a week – and 90 people are on the now-closed wait list. Hawkey has never witnessed such high numbers.
“Two-thirds of that waiting list are women and we only have a turnover of four or five units a year. So, do the maths. We could build two more Wesley villages tomorrow and fill them up immediately.” Fourteen more units are about to be added to WesleyCare but it’s still not enough.
The residents gather for fish and chip evenings, lawn bowls and jigsaws and trips around the city. They also engage with neighbours and friends around the complex, providing the social connection that is part of ageing well.
“There are very few places like this around in our region,” says Hawkey. “If you’ve rented all your life, the choices are really, really limited in terms of what you can afford.
“You see lots of these lovely new villages for older people but they’re all licensed to occupy and to be able to afford to go into one you’ve got to have an asset to sell in order to be able to buy in.”
Village people
Fraoch Fraser lives in a $150-a-week WesleyCare bedsit flat. The 75-year-old has rented all her life. She was a social worker until she retired, never able to save enough to buy her own home.
As she moved into retirement, Fraser felt increasingly vulnerable when her landlord sold her flat. She looked at about 50 potential rentals around Christchurch. “Some were so awful that I never got past the driveway. They were places where I didn’t want to live. Or I missed out on a place because there was so much competition. I was hugely worried because a roof over your head is so important.”
Through Age Concern, she heard about Wesley’s affordable housing village. Six years later, she’s happily ensconced in village life, attending social events and heading out on errands on her mobility scooter. Her rent is covered by her pension and an accommodation supplement. The space is warm and all she needs. And Fraser likes that it’s all on one level and she can mix with others of similar age.
“I still have to budget but we get a very good deal here and the staff are wonderful,” she says.
Like WesleyCare, there are other villages and residences for seniors which are affordable and accessible to older tenants but accessing them depends on where you live.
In Auckland, independent community housing provider Haumaru Housing manages 62 villages that were once pensioner flats owned by Auckland Council and its predecessors. Set up as a joint venture between the council and the Selwyn Foundation, Haumaru manages a mix of originals and new-builds on council land. It is the largest community housing provider for older people in New Zealand, with 1630 tenants, including about 200 couples.
There are rules to get a flat or apartment: tenants must be 65 or older and living independently. Preference is given to those on the social housing register, and there are assets and savings limits for residents signing up.
In Lower Hutt, Maria pays almost $300 a week for her share of a privately owned rental, but 72-year-old Cheryl Ngawati pays $130 weekly for a new apartment in West Auckland run by Haumaru.
Ngawati (Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara, Ngāpuhi) lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Wilsher Village, Henderson. The apartments were purpose-built four years ago. They have a six-star energy rating and she is the first to occupy her unit. She’s proud of her space: there’s an open-plan kitchen and living area, and a balcony overlooking the street. It is warm and inviting, and the only place Ngawati has felt fond enough of to call home in recent times. For many years, she lived with relatives – her late husband’s mother, and with an adult daughter in Māngere.
Ngawati owned a house with her late husband, but they lost it due to his debts. She left him and raised her four children on her own in Northland, moving them in and out of then-Housing Corporation rentals and between whānau.
“I know the stress of moving and I do know what it’s like not to have your own place.’’
She beams as she talks about how much she loves her home. She can open her door and socialise with other residents on her floor and join in activities in the village.
“There’s a mandate to grow social housing,” Haumaru Housing CEO Gillian Schweizer says. “The bubble of people ageing who can’t afford homes is growing, particularly for females.”
Age Concern chief executive Karen Billings-Jensen agrees. Age Concern generally wants to see more pensioner villages like WesleyCare and Haumaru available right around the country.
Social housing is one part of the housing sector. Most pensioners who don’t own their own homes at retirement age end up renting from private landlords. And there’s another group rising in numbers: those finishing up paid work but still with a mortgage.
Billings-Jensen points out that senior homeowners struggle with the same issues as younger owners still in work: rising insurance costs, high mortgage interest rates, increasing rate bills (though councils generally offer a discount or offset plan to older residents). “If you can’t maintain your house properly, it will lose its value.”
Generation X wave
But it’s not just superannuitants who are challenged in retirement. Angela Meyer is a gender-equity campaigner and runs Hi Money! which offers financial workshops for women. There’s another wave of impoverished women coming through, says Meyer: generation X females (born between the mid-60s and early 80s) are tracking to be worse off than the baby boomers now close to or in retirement.
Again, the numbers: by their 50s, women’s KiwiSaver balances are about a third lower than that of men of the same age. A 2023 Canstar Consumer Pulse Survey showed that 52% of women said they were not on track to achieve their retirement savings goal.
“We are retiring into poverty. Yes, every woman’s circumstance is different, but overall, it’s not a good sign,” says Meyer.
“There are a lot of women who are working, who don’t own their own homes, who are having to rent, who are struggling to put food on their table. Others might have an asset like their house but other than that, they have nothing.”
Overlay that with the employment market and prejudice and bias against women in mid-life, “and if you’ve been out of the workforce for some time, then you’re very unlikely to be able to get a well-paying job that allows you to save for your retirement.”
KiwiSaver is 17 years old. The gap between KiwiSaver savings in males and females starts at the age of about 18. Meyer: “The way that everyone talks about retirement savings is under a very hetero-normative, very conservative idea that you’re living in a two-person household where you’ve paid off your mortgage and both of you have been saving for your retirement.’’
Maria had no chance to save anything because she was raising four children alone. She shrugs her shoulders and tries to smile. “My daughter tried to make it sound good by saying, ‘Well, Mum, you don’t have to worry about the roof leaking, you don’t have to worry about all the things going wrong when you own a house.’
“I said, ‘That’s true.’ But I also said, ‘You don’t pay $580 a week for your home.’”
She’s generous with the little she has, volunteering as a Cancer Society and Meals on Wheels driver, which reimburses her petrol and means she gets a sandwich if she helps out over lunchtime. She went to a foodbank once but hasn’t returned because she felt guilty.
In the evenings, she plays a card game on her phone or watches TV. One of the joys is when her grandchildren are in the area for sport or kapa haka.
At Maria’s they get a “Nana kiss and cuddle” and even in her circumstances, a special treat: biscuits bought on special and put aside for them. “They make sore tummies feel better and it makes sad children happy.”
The stats: Housing for the over-65s
Living in their own home with or without a mortgage
- 66% own a house without a mortgage
- 13% have a house and mortgage
- 20% rent a house or unit
Retirement village
- 14% of over-75s live in a retirement village. Generally, occupiers must have an asset to sell to get in
Kāinga Ora-run or -leased social house or apartment
- Over-65s make up 12.2% of state house tenants, with almost 5000 single retired women in Kāinga Ora housing
Social housing
- Single women over 65 make up 7.4% of social housing tenants
- About 1170 are currently on the Ministry of Social Development’s social housing register and eligible for public housing but waiting for a space
Aged-care village or hospital
- About 4.4% of over-65s are living in an aged-care village or hospital
Tomorrow: Off the streets - women and transitional housing.