Golf tournament to help with emergency, transitional housing for women

The tournament is the result of a push to address the increasing numbers of aging women experiencing homelessness as detailed by the Point-in-Time Count conducted in January 2023 by the Tucson Pima Collaboration to end Homelessness.

The study found that one in five people experiencing homelessness are age 55 or older. At the time of the study, 483 women were housed in emergency shelters; more than 67% of those were ages 55 to 64 and were homeless or unsheltered.

“We’ve noticed there has been a very big uptick in homelessness among older people in general, but specifically in senior women,” said Trevor Williamson, Communications and Events Specialist with Primavera Foundation. “We became interested in reaching out to them, especially since many of these women have children with them.”

For more than 40 years, the nonprofit organization has been dedicated to providing services that create pathways out of poverty for individuals and families, ranging from programs that assist clients with obtaining safe, affordable, permanent housing and job training to education in financial literacy and basic life skills.

The Foundation is in the midst of a campaign to increase the number of shelter beds in Casa Paloma Women’s Shelter from nine to 17 over the next few months.

“It is a huge focus for us to expand our existing women’s shelter,” Williamson said. “We see many seniors on fixed incomes whose mortgage rates have increased so they can’t afford their mortgage anymore. They don’t have families or kids to take care of them, so they are homeless for the first time. It is out of control.”

Willamson hopes that the upcoming tournament will provide the dual benefits of expanding Primavera’s volunteer and donor bases while increasing awareness about its variety of programs.