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The shortage of housing for women trying to escape domestic violence has reached chronic levels, with many forced to turn to ill-equipped and dangerous temporary accommodation. By Madison Griffiths.
Homelessness threat to domestic violence victims
While nursing her four-month-old baby one evening on the south coast of New South Wales, Elsa* called a domestic abuse refuge hotline. It was her only opportunity to do so, as her abusive partner was out of the house.
“I was hoping I could be offered some sort of housing,” she tells The Saturday Paper. Instead, Elsa was told there was a 10-year waitlist for accommodation and her best option was a night in a hotel. This she declined, concerned that her then partner would find it suspicious.
Elsa remembers telling the crisis worker, “My child will be 10 years old before we can get a home.” Luckily, she was able to couch-surf with trusted friends for a short time before applying for a “dark, mouldy” rental. “If that had not happened, I may have gone back. He was asking me to go back.”
For many crisis workers and victim-survivors across the country, the absence of sufficient operational funding towards what many call the “prickly end” of domestic abuse is not only frustrating; it’s dangerous. Many did not want to identify themselves or their organisations for fear of jeopardising their effectiveness, or funding. Diana*, who retired from her role at a crisis domestic violence service in Queensland last year, says she was “placing people in motels and temporary accommodation every night”.
In Australia, domestic and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women. Of all women and girls seeking refuge, 45 per cent are victim-survivors of domestic and family abuse. Assigning motels, Airbnbs and other temporary dwellings proves especially dangerous when such accommodation is not equipped to tend to the specific needs of those endeavouring to flee an abusive partner.
Kiera*, a crisis worker based in Victoria, tells The Saturday Paper that “appropriate and safe accommodation has consistently been the key barrier for victim-survivors, even prior to the housing crisis. I’ve heard of situations where rooming houses are the only options but with advice to ensure that furniture is not bolted down so that it can be moved in front of doors.”
Moreover, some motels will limit the amount of days that victim-survivors can stay. As Alice*, a social worker who completed her placement at a crisis centre in regional NSW this year, stresses, “some of these temporary accommodation lodgings fail to realise that a victim-survivor’s perpetrator may have led them to overuse these services as well, which restricts the victim-survivor’s access to temporary housing.”
Diana points out that a lot of the work that domestic and family violence services do is with moteliers, who are generally not specialists in the field. “They don’t have extra cash, and a lot of motels don’t want to work with victim-survivors. They’re too ‘high risk’. Abusers could’ve tracked their phones and this would then potentially cause damage, harm or having the victim-survivor kidnapped,” she says. “Many motels don’t want anything to do with this.
“Moteliers aren’t trauma-informed and often have people who may just have the clothes on the back.”
Alice found the lack of trauma-informed care from temporary housing services horrifying.
“A lot of them require bank statements, a phone or other documents or items that many victim-survivors don’t have access to after fleeing.”
In April, Minister for Women Katy Gallagher launched the Labor Party’s campaign pitch, “Building Australia’s future: Labor’s commitment to women”. It touted the government’s first-term investment of “more than $4 billion for women’s safety initiatives”, including “boosting and securing frontline services” and 33 new women’s shelters. And this month the government’s new Leaving Violence Program began operating, under which victim-survivors can access $5000 to help them escape an abusive partner.
These are positive developments at the federal level, but their impact is still to be determined and the story on the frontlines of some state services is one of mounting frustration. In June, Domestic Violence NSW’s call for a 50 per cent increase to baseline funding for domestic and family violence services across the state was rejected.
Greens NSW spokesperson for Gendered Violence and Abuse, Abigail Boyd, last month said “the Minns Labor government has not only failed to meet repeated calls from domestic and family violence experts for a 50% increase in baseline funding for frontline services, but it has embarked on yet another attempt at spin – dressing up a cash splash for courts and the corrections system as somehow being funded for domestic and family violence victim-survivors.”
Jayne Clowes lobbied hard alongside DVNSW for that baseline funding boost, noting that “without that increase, the current crisis will only deepen”.
“We save people’s lives,” says Clowes, who is chief executive of Carrie’s Place, a domestic violence and homelessness service in Maitland. The service is one of a consortium of eight in the Hunter region and, over the past year, it has experienced a record 65 per cent increase in referrals – that’s 2263 additional cases to manage.
NSW Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Jodie Harrison tells The Saturday Paper that “the majority of our funding in domestic and family violence is for frontline services”.
Diana understands the frustration of frontline providers intimately. “Frontline services tend to be told to continue to work with what they’ve got or do more work without more resources,” she says.
Crisis support workers are expected to anticipate holiday spikes in temporary accommodation and to plan accordingly. For example, Diana says, “When Pink’s concert was in Brisbane, we had to pre-book motel rooms so we weren’t left without. Sometimes, we’d get someone to hospital and say, ‘Can you have this person overnight?’ as we wouldn’t have a bed for them in the entire state of Queensland.”
Last year, her workplace was rocked when a victim-survivor suicided while in a temporary stay at a motel. “All of these systems are buckling under pressure,” she says.
Mission Australia program manager Kellie Maxwell, who is based in Lightning Ridge in regional NSW, stresses that victim-survivors in remote areas are especially pressed when it comes to developing an “exit strategy”.
“There are no long-term affordable housing options once the immediate crisis is resolved,” she tells The Saturday Paper. “There is an absolute shortage of social and affordable housing in all of our areas.”
“Often, we ring around other refuges across New South Wales, and very rarely are there any with vacancies. It’s really hard,” she says. “Sometimes we are working with 150 per cent more clients than what we are contracted to.”
The absence of wraparound services and safe housing results in many victim-survivors “disengaging from the service entirely”, Diana says. Crisis workers are often unable to get back in touch with them once they disappear.
“They don’t have a choice in where they go,” Alice says. “I’ve seen instances of victim-survivors refusing to go to the chosen motel and not being helped further.”
Elsa is one such individual. She never called again after being offered a single night in a hotel. “I can see how I could’ve gotten so stuck,” she says. Instead of relying on domestic violence services, Elsa made do with Salvation Army vouchers instead.
This disconnection is particularly distressing for those on the frontlines, who say that more funding will help them to meet urgent and rising demand. “It’s crisis organisations that have to turn up to the Coroners Court and explain why they didn’t have emergency accommodation for this person,” Diana says.
* Names have been changed
National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service 1800 737 732
Lifeline 13 11 14
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 12, 2025 as "No refuge".
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