A leading cause of homelessness

All over the world domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and children, and a lack of affordable housing options is regularly reported by survivors as one of the primary barriers to escaping abuse. Housing programmes provide critical services for survivors of domestic violence and are often a key component that allows survivors to flee the violence perpetrated against them. A woman shouldn’t have to be forced to return to an abusive relationship, and sometimes life-threatening situation, because of lack of affordable housing.

That is why we need to see more of a ‘smarter’ way of building. I am personally fed up hearing politicians and governments saying over and over again “we can’t afford new housing, we can’t afford to build”.

And while this sort of attitude just keeps going on day in and day out, hundreds of thousands of women and children live in fear in their own homes.

Where there is a will, there is a way. I am determined there is a more cost-efficient way of building and a more affordable way of housing.

Apart from the actual building itself, there needs to be more of housing programmes which would vary to include short and long-term housing, job opportunities and different types of support services that work to meet the individual needs of survivors. The ‘after-care’ is just as important as the actual moment a woman leaves an abusive relationship – it’s during the after-care that she will have a chance to re-build both her practical- and emotional life.

And to be able to have her own safe home is a very big and important part of making all this possible and to end the destructive cycle she is in.