Next time you find yourself asking this question we suggest you add “… and go where? With mounting public outrage and efforts by Governments around the country grappling with how to stop the scourge of family violence, we in the housing and homelessness sector know full well that housing is always part of the conversation.

Mission Australian recently noted on social media that 45% of women and girls seeking homelessness assistance name domestic and family violence as a reason for needing support.
 
Report after report, including this July 2021 Equity Economics report called Nowhere to Go, has highlighted that the lack of available social and affordable housing is not only trapping women in their homes but distressingly, driving them back to their perpetrators and the risk of violence, or into homelessness. Anne Summers paints this choice starkly in her 2022 report for the Paul Ramsey Foundation: Violence or Poverty

Governments must do more to ensure everyone has a safe, secure home. But rather than read of our prescriptions we will refer you to the NSW Peak Body Domestic Violence NSW (DVNSW) who, as one journalist recently noted methodically, carefully and patiently sets out key asks of government every year. 
 
We recommend to you the Domestic Violence NSW Pre-Budget Submission – which sets out what is required to end domestic violence in one generation and a more recent statement that calls for, an additional 750 transitional homes for women, children and young people who have experienced domestic and family violence and the building of 7,500 new social and affordable homes in NSW each year for 20 years… to provide a pathway out of crisis accommodation.