The National Women's Council has called for stronger legal protections that would allow women and children in abusive situations to remain safely in the family home, and for perpetrators to be removed instead.
According to a paper published by the organisation, women seeking to escape domestic violence with their children are faced with stark choices which often mean having to choose between homelessness or returning to their abuser.
The document forms part of a submission which will inform the development of the Child and Family Homelessness Action Plan by the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
The paper has found that where women make the decision to leave, they move from one emergency accommodation centre or refuge to another, and face systems – such as the justice, housing, and social protection systems – that do not coordinate with each other.
It has noted that family homelessness is gendered, with more than 56% of families in homelessness headed by a lone parent, the vast majority of whom are women.
Some groups of women are much more likely to experience the housing crisis, such as lone parents, Traveller and Roma women, and women in international protection.
The paper makes specific recommendations to protect these groups from homelessness, and to improve their access to supports in homelessness.
The number of children (5,000) who are in homeless services and the more than 4,500 women in emergency accommodation are just the tip of the iceberg according to NWC Executive Director Corrinne Hasson.
"Official statistics don’t count women in refuges, or families sleeping on couches. We simply don’t know how many women and families are in homelessness. What we do know is that domestic violence is a leading cause of women’s homelessness, and that the housing crisis is enabling exploitation of women, for example in sex for rent exploitation," she said.
The housing crisis is compounding the shocking level of violence against women according to NWC’s Senior Policy Coordinator (Violence Against Women) Ivanna Youtchak.
"Women leaving abuse – often with children – encounter a system with severely limited availability due to high demand, capable of meeting only short-term emergency accommodation needs. Once that immediate crisis period is over, many survivors are left with no long-term housing options.
"For children already traumatised by domestic violence, instability and moving around between services is profoundly destabilising. More must be done to keep women and children in their homes, and in their communities, to stop them from falling through the cracks in the first place."
Publication of the Child and Family Homelessness Action Plan is expected in the coming months.
