Senior Women Living Together: A Canadian Grassroots Initiative
Thank you to everyone who attended our live conversation with Pat Dunn on May 28, 2026. The conversation will be published as an At Home, On Air podcast episode soon. Participants will be notified by email and sent the takeaway resources. In the meantime, please continue the conversation with those you know and enjoy listening to our archive of episodes:
“I had no idea there were so many senior women living in precarious housing situations and socially isolated. Now, I had a different problem … I needed to find a way to help them all, not just myself.”
Pat Dunn
Thank You to Our Featured Guest:
Pat Dunn | Founder and Executive Director of Senior Women Living Together
Thank You to Our Podcast Host:
Susanne Stadler | At Home With Growing Older
Episode Description:
Pat Dunn is a former Public Health Nurse whose path to founding Senior Women Living Together was born out of personal hardship. After losing her husband suddenly in 2014, Pat found herself navigating widowhood, financial instability, and an affordable housing crisis that pushed her to the brink of homelessness by 2018.
Unable to find safe, affordable shared housing options for senior women, Pat took matters into her own hands.
In 2019, she launched a Facebook group to connect like-minded women — and within a year, over 1,700 members had joined, revealing just how widespread the crisis was. Drawing on her background in program development, Pat created a structured support system to help women find compatible homemates, and soon found stable, affordable housing for herself through the very community she built.
“I had no idea there were so many senior women living in precarious housing situations and socially isolated. Now, I had a different problem … I needed to find a way to help them all, not just myself.”
Driven by the stories of the women she met along the way, Pat transformed her grassroots group into a non-profit organization dedicated to helping senior women across Canada find safe, affordable, and companionable housing — turning her own lowest moment into a lifeline for thousands.
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Takeaway Resources:
Takeaway resources from this conversation will be released at the time of the podcast episode.