Gender-blind: Why Housing Policy is Failing Women in Australia by Tanya Corrie, CEO, Juno
The most common stereotype of what it is to be homeless in Australia remains the vision of a single, older male, on the streets, sleeping rough. It is of a large hall filled with temporary beds and soup kitchens where people experiencing homelessness can seek reprieve from a night on the streets and an empty belly.
This stereotype unfortunately misses the mark about the real face of homelessness and what it is to be homeless. It ignores the gendered aspects of homelessness, why it looks different for women, and why housing policy needs to adopt a gendered lens. Embedded attitudes and perceptions around homelessness lead to siloed service systems that limit support for women experiencing homelessness, including disjointed family violence crisis and homelessness support systems; lack of long-term affordable accommodation for single-income families; and inadequate periods of trauma-informed support after women receive permanent housing.
The reality is that 60 per cent of people presenting to homelessness services in Australia are women.[1] Older women are the fastest growing group of those presenting to homelessness services because of a lifetime of gendered inequality, income poverty and caring responsibilities.[2]
These are the faces of homelessness that we don’t see. These women are not often sleeping rough, but the ones that do are at a much higher risk of experiencing violence and sexual assault.[3] They are more likely to be women and their children sleeping in cars, older women who are living in caravans or hostels, and the estimated 7,690 women that return to violent relationships[4] as they are being forced to make an impossible choice – violence or homelessness.
They are women like Lee,* who at 53, was forced to leave her previous rental with her 8-year-old son because it was an unsafe environment for them due to the risk of violence. Prior to renting, Lee owned her home but had to sell her house to pay the costs associated with a family court matter involving the perpetrator.
As a sole parent with one income, soaring rental prices and low rental availability, Lee could not find an affordable property and was pushed into homelessness. She spent some time couch surfing with family before moving to Melbourne to be closer to her oldest child. At the time of referral to Juno, Lee and her son were moving into emergency accommodation after the property where they had been couch surfing became too crowded.
Or they are women like Mary* who, after years of abuse and control by her husband, left him once their children had left home after spending 20 years caring for them. She had no superannuation, no savings and access to no support when she was referred to Juno for housing assistance. Mary slept in a caravan in a friend’s yard until she could organise access to appropriate disability support payments and housing, living in housing limbo for over a year until she was able to find somewhere safe and affordable to call home.
The Homes for 100 Women Project, driven by the Women’s Housing Alliance[5] of which Juno is a member, would address the critical need for stable, secure affordable housing and support for women experiencing homelessness in Victoria.
The Project would remove the current siloes that exist in enabling women and children to access affordable housing and support, and replace them with a collaborative, coordinated and trauma-informed approach.
The model is an integrated, whole-of-life approach designed by Victoria’s leading agencies in supporting women experiencing family violence and homelessness.
The Project provides women with a clear and immediate pathway from any family violence intake point to accommodation. Women:
1. Receive housing first,
2. Receive a single case manager and
3. Connect to gender-specific supports
Once secure, stable housing is in place, women can access a coordinated program of health and recovery, legal, financial, income, education and employment supports.
This approach has been trialled successfully in Queensland and is based on evidence that integrated approaches and multi-disciplinary service delivery improves safety and decreases the barriers women face when seeking support.[6] Similar, wraparound support models trialled by member organisations have shown a return on investment as high as $3.96 for every $1 invested[7]and with housing stabilised, improvements to income as high as $203 per week have been experienced with ongoing goal setting and planning.[8]
What is required is the political will to recognise homelessness for women needs its own response and that this epidemic is only going to worsen the longer it is ignored.
It requires an acknowledgment that despite progress that may have been made in gender equality, women still experience poorer economic outcomes than men, and this poverty accumulates over their life course. We need to change the policy settings that lead to this and adapt solutions to address and improve outcomes for women.
[1] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2022) Specialist homelessness services annual report 2021-22, AIHW
[2] Australian Human Rights Commission (2019) Risk of Homelessness in Older women, AHRC
[3] Box, E., Flatau, P., & Lester, L. (2022). Women sleeping rough: The health, social and economic costs of homelessness. Health & Social Care in the Community, 00, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13811
[4] Equity Economics (2021) Nowhere to Go, Everybody’s Home
[5] The Women’s Housing Alliance (WHA) formed in 2019 as a cross-sector partnership to address the systemic barriers and the housing crisis being faced by women and children across Victoria. WHA members are leading organisations across the family violence, legal, health and housing sectors that support women and children experiencing and at risk of homelessness. Our vision is to ensure adequate, safe and secure housing solutions which provide timely, accessible, and affordable homes for women, children, and young people in vulnerable circumstances.
[6] ANROWS (2020) Working across sectors to meet the needs of clients experiencing domestic and family violence, ANROWS
[7] Deloitte Access Economics (2019), Social Return in Investment: A Case Study Approach, Macauley Services for Women
[8] For Purpose (not published) Midline evaluation of EMPower Program for Juno Services, Juno
About Juno
Juno is a support and advocacy organisation working across Melbourne. We provide gender-informed services that empower and support women (CIS- and Trans-) and non-binary people and their children experiencing homelessness and housing stress, family violence and financial hardship. We advocate to raise awareness of the unique issues women and non-binary people face and change the systems and structures which contribute to gendered poverty, homelessness and family violence.
Website: www.juno.org.au
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/juno-org-au
Twitter: https://twitter.com/junoinc_