FEAR of homelessness and lack of safe housing are the main concern of women escaping domestic violence, Women’s Aid said today.

The domestic-abuse charity published two reports showing that homelessness is a major risk for the majority of women leaving an abusive partner.  

It said that the Domestic Abuse Bill, which is currently at the committee stage in Parliament, must be amended to ensure that all survivors, including migrant women, can access refuge, housing and support services.

The charity added that councils must consider survivors as being in priority need for housing, and that councils’ local-connection requirement on women who need to cross local-authority boundaries to escape abuse should be abolished.   

Nearly 70 per cent of women in abusive relationships were prevented from leaving by their housing situation and fear of becoming homelsss, according to the charity’s Domestic Abuse Report 2020: The Hidden Housing Crisis.
 
A second report, Nowhere to Turn 2020 published the results of the government-funded No Woman Turned Away (NWTA) project, which supported 243 women with housing needs from January 2019 to January 2020.

It found that seven per cent — 17 women — had slept rough, two of whom had a physical disability, and one had slept rough with her son.

A further 38 per cent (93 women) had to stay with friends or family temporarily as they had no home.

Women’s Aid acting CEO Nicki Norman said: “Often, we are asked why survivors don’t just leave abusive relationships. The two reports we are publishing today both show clearly that fear of homelessness is a key barrier.

“While some women are forced to sleep rough, more become the ‘hidden homeless’ — sleeping on the sofas of their friends and families or in other insecure forms of accommodation.

“It is completely unacceptable that women feel they have to choose between staying with an abuser or be faced with homelessness or unsafe and unsuitable housing.”

Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, called for “urgent and sustained” government funding to build more social housing so that there are enough genuinely affordable homes in Britain.

She said: “There must always be somewhere safe for survivors to go, be that a specialist refuge or a secure social home.”