We need to write homeless women back into the story

Op-ed published by The Post 8 March 2024.

We need to write homeless women back into the story | The Post

Victoria Crockford is the convenor of the Coalition to End Women’s Homelessness.

OPINION: Imagine you have over $300 million to invest in critical infrastructure that transforms people’s lives.

Imagine your data tells you 50% of the people have very different needs from that infrastructure than the other half, but you ignore that detail.

That is the way we approach women’s homelessness in this country.

Every year, we invest over $300m in emergency housing grants, on top of significant investment in other housing subsidies. The last census found that 102,123 people identified as experiencing “severe housing deprivation” - the proxy we use for those living unhoused. Of that group, an internationally high number of 50% identified as women. That’s more than 50,000 people.

But we have no plan, policy, or funding that recognises the unique challenges and needs of these women. Often, the few housing providers who do provide women-only spaces and services are fundraising to make sure they cover the most basic of needs, like tampons.

This is not due to ill-intent or even intentional design; it is largely because we have made these women invisible to us. As a society, we don’t see women’s homelessness in the same way we see men’s. We often hold an image in our minds of a single man alone on the street - but the reality on the ground is very different for women.

Data from Housing First Auckland, a group of four housing providers, shows that they support more women coming from temporary sharing and/or private housing than those who have slept rough. Only 28% of those who identified sleeping rough were women, while 72% were men. Additionally, of the families supported by the collective of providers, three-quarters are households headed up by women.

This invisibility is reflected at the central government level. For example, the specific needs of women are mentioned only once in our current Homelessness Action Plan, on page 25, in the context of exiting prison. Women are not investigated at all in our published data on homelessness.

This inability to design and plan with a gender lens is especially meaningful for our older women, whom evidence - both anecdotal and academic - indicates are the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness.

These women are often in the position of getting to the end of a life of hard work and caregiving only to find the pension does not stretch to the extraordinary rises in rental costs, with the result being they have to move from rental to rental or, distressingly, sleep in their cars. All at a time when they are more vulnerable to falls and illness and are more likely to suffer from social isolation. With the Retirement Commission projecting that 40% of retirees will be renting by 2048, this issue is a rapidly mounting one.

The theme for International Women’s Day is to “inspire inclusion” and this failure to include 50,000 women at all stages of their lives in an experience so fundamental to the human condition as having a place to call home is something we need to open our eyes to, as it ultimately impacts all of us.

That 75-year-old woman sleeping in her car could easily be your grandmother,or mine. And the woman with the three kids in her third spare bedroom or garage in as many years trying to keep it together as her kids change schools and get ill from crowded conditions? She is doing her best to raise the next generation of our country.

The good news is that with the new census due out soon, our Government and our policymakers have a unique opportunity to write women back into the story using updated numbers and a refreshed approach to our national action plan on homelessness.

We can work towards a publicly available database about housing needs that is cross-agency and broken down by gender so we have reliable numbers to use for making investment decisions.

Through an updated national action plan for homelessness, we can start closing the funding gap that women-only housing providers experience so that they aren’t square pegs in a round hole of a funding model that doesn’t work for women’s holistic needs.

We can create more options for long-term tenancies by creating long-term funding options for the community housing and Māori housing sectors so that older women don’t find themselves retired, renting in precarious circumstances, and alone.

We can listen carefully and closely to the voices of the women living this reality as we develop and implement this plan because they have insights that no statistics could ever provide.

As we engage in our events and conversations this International Women’s Day, let’s use the opportunity to commit to truly seeing those women who have become so invisible to us. Let’s commit to taking action on women’s homelessness. 50,000 women, and their kids, are relying on it.