The number of women and girls seeking help from homelessness services while experiencing family violence and mental health issues soared by six per cent in just two years, new data has revealed. Source: The Australian.
Homelessness Australia will present the shocking new analysis to MPs and senators in a briefing today, as policymakers discuss the next phase of the nation’s approach to homelessness.
The peak body found almost 30,000 women and girls sought help in 2024-25 for homelessness while undergoing both family or domestic violence and mental health issues.
About two in five women – or about 12,000 people – were still homeless when their support ended, rising 14 per cent in just two years.
Among those women, a whopping almost 80 per cent were aged under 45.
Homelessness Australia CEO Kate Colvin said the findings revealed the “contemporary face” of Australia’s homelessness crisis – women the peak body said who were increasingly trapped in a “doom loop”.
“The person at the centre of this crisis is not who most people picture,” she said.
“These are young women who have fled a violent home and have nowhere safe to go. Without housing and without ongoing support, there is no way out.”
Ms Colvin said for too many women, it was a choice between “violence on the street or violence at home”.
“A woman may well calculate that a man offering a place to stay with strings attached is the least worst option,” she said.
“That is not a choice anyone in this country should have to make, yet we are forcing it on vulnerable women and girls every day.”
Homelessness Australia has also sought to pressure the government to treat housing, mental health, and family and domestic violence as interconnected problems, in particular for women.
The next National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement and the next action plan on violence against women are being developed by the Albanese Government.
Last year, the government announced it would spend $100 million on new crisis, transitional, and youth housing as part of the $1 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
FULL STORY
Thousands of Aussie women trapped in ‘doom loop’ as grim new report reveals extent of homelessness crisis (By Nathan Schmidt, The Australian)
