AHURI Final Report, no. 339, October 2020

Key points
- In general, crisis and emergency responses are reportedly effective in meeting the short-term needs of women and children, especially non-Indigenous women and children in major urban areas. However, this is not universal. Indigenous women and children in remote and regional areas face acute shortages in housing support and culturally safe service.

- Moving from short-term or transitional accommodation into permanent, independent housing is very difficult, and sometimes unachievable, for women and children affected by domestic and family violence (DFV).

- Specialist Homelessness Services (SHSs) and other human services are not able to compensate for the absence of affordable, suitable housing across the housing system: the provision of such housing is not within their remit or control yet it is critical to allowing women and children to flourish in the longer-term.

- Social housing is valued by tenants, and investment to overcome current undersupply could address problems with pathways to permanent housing.

- In social housing’s currently marginalised state, tensions exist between aspirations to support vulnerable groups and policies relating to tenancy management: in particular, the role of social landlords in relation to crime and anti-social behaviour.

- Housing pathways are constrained by capacity and resource scarce constraints within housing support systems. These constraints appear to be more significant barriers to safe and sustainable housing pathways than problems of integration between systems.

- Other areas of government policy, such as the income support system, exacerbate poverty and disadvantage and make re-establishing stable housing more difficult for women who have experienced DFV. (Executive summary). Record #6865