@Butterer is certainly not alone. A lot of middle aged and older people are hidden homeless, sofa surfing, going into unsafe shares in hopeless desperation, then choosing between reporting to the police when that desperation is exploited and still living under the same roof as the person they complained of, or putting up with it for fear of being out in a shop doorway.
(A little bonus of being hidden homeless is that nobody counts you as existing, because only street homeless junkies neatly fit the tick box. Another little bonus is official non existence in other ways, such as registering with a g.p., and therefore any access to N.H.S, among other things requiring proof of address. Unlawfully subletting landlords, or sofa surfing arrangements, don't provide official paperwork proving address)
There's an increased rate of breakups among middle aged and elderly people, on top of the usual groups of single, divorced, widowed, deserted, never married. Increasing lifespan is thought to be a part of the cause, when people think, around pre retirement, that with children gone, they are stuck with the bad habits of the partner for up to another half century! The trouble is, the children boomerang back with useless degrees, and half the equity in the family house (remortgaged or not) won't buy two nice flats, each with two or three bedrooms to put them in.
Can a middle aged person get a mortgage? First time buyer? No. Help to buy? No. What about 25 year mortgage, on a single income, for a person near or beyond retirement age? Guess. Right. Then it's private rental from there to the grave.
(Being liable to getting two month's notice, for no fault eviction, is an unsatisfactory way to live and die. But lifelong security of tenure is reserved for the aristocrats of the letting world, council tenants, who pay either nothing or half down t a tenth of the value of their rental, and can never be got rid of, when making an entire district live in hell by their antisocial behaviour)
But at least, with a rental, there's Housing Benefit to make it affordable, especially if one or both partners has very little private pension ? No. Private savings mean No Housing Benefit.
(N.B. Please challenge the perfidious statement by the Age Hatred Foundation, known as Resolution, that U.K. pensioners are rich because the average is rich. Only in the sense bus passengers are all multi billionaires, On Average, if Bill Gates step onto the same bus. U.K. pensions are the world's worst, U.K civil servants are rich, but pensioners in general may be struggling to eat or heat)
Life savings, the dregs of the equity from the house sale and whatever other assets they have will mean both parties count as being too rich to have Housing Benefit, or even the state pension brought up to the official minimum for survival. Nor can they apply for council accommodation, because savings debar them. Nor, in many cases, can they get a private rental, since landlords are fixated on double earning young couples, not retired singles.
So yes, there's a large and growing middle aged and older population, ordinary, law abiding, decent neighbours, but needing a roof over their heads. Shelter and the multiplicity of charities and representatives simply ignore their existence. There are reprehensible 'special' places for old people to be ghettoised.
( Red hair is glorious, but it would be freaky to put 'The Gingers' together in special Gingers housing where they could " mix with their own kind," away from the rest of society. Why is everyone over a certain age assumed to need segregation?)
If apartheid was bad in South Africa, and white-only buses were bad in Southern U.S.A, why is old-only segregation perfectly acceptable in the Southern Counties?
I would plead with anyone not to let it go unchallenged when the next empty-skull gibbers about "the housing needs of Y.O.U.N.G. people". Do their parents and grandparents go and sleep in fields? * Why are only one age group in need of shelter from the elements?
*Yes, in fields, in tents on beaches, in cars, and, in the infamous example which reached public attention, a couple in their 90's, he a wheelchair user, were living in a Bournemouth bus shelter as punishment for having sufficient life savings to replace his wheelchair and pay a deposit and rent in advance for a private rental and still have enough for decent funerals.
Sorry for rant, but @Butterer is absolutely right, the experience absolutely typical, and not one person ever mentions it. It's like child abuse half a century ago, that people either choose to ignore or cannot believe. (By the way, to those assuming in astonishment that domestic abuse by women or men is only possible if they are in special accommodation for criminals or junkies, I wish I could find the link to a radio 4 interview with a sofa surfing hidden homeless vicar's wife. One moment she was in a large vicarage, the next, the church wanted to sell it, so they were all on the street. The husband was given a new job with a single lodging, a hundred miles away, but the wife and children couldn't be housed by church or council, didn't count in the old or the new district, and in any case the youngest had at last got a place in a special needs school, so they couldn't move. Of course no private landlord would let them a place. They couldn't afford rent, and couldn't qualify for Housing Benefit. They scattered among the old parishioners, but it was precarious.)