Many women are forced to continue living with an abusive partner because they have nowhere else to go, a new report by the National Women’s Council (NWC) has found.
The research, published on Friday, details how housing insecurity makes women and children more vulnerable to domestic abuse and exploitation.
“This often means that women must make the choice to stay with an abuser or leave and navigate homelessness,” the report notes.
“Where women – often with children – choose to leave, they encounter a system with severely limited availability due to high demand, capable of meeting only immediate short-term emergency accommodation needs.
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“Once that immediate crisis period is over, many survivors are left with no long-term housing options.”
As a result, many women move “from one emergency shelter or accommodation to another” or return to abusive relationships “simply because they have nowhere else to go”.
The report highlights the importance of recognising housing as a crucial part of the solution to ending violence against women. It calls for the Government to declare a housing emergency and “dramatically increase the supply of all types of housing across the country”.
The report also found that marginalised groups of women – including Traveller and Roma women, migrant women, disabled women, women experiencing addiction, and girls in the care system – experience additional barriers to accessing gender-based violence supports and housing services.
As many women who experience domestic or gender-based violence often deal with numerous different services, the NWC said there needs to be a more co-ordinated approach.
[ Gender-based violence is ‘an affront to human dignity’, says ConnollyOpens in new window ]
Ivanna Youtchak, violence against women co-ordinator at the NWC, said: “Survivors often deal with several services – housing, gardaí, health, child services and social protection – yet these systems rarely talk to each other, putting more weight on survivors’ shoulders.
“We need an integrated approach, where these services communicate and co-operate with one another. This would minimise the traumatic impact on survivors and ensure that women and children don’t fall through the cracks or end up trapped in an abusive situation because they have nowhere to go.”
Other recommendations in the report include improving access to legal protection for survivors of domestic or gender-based violence, investigating and addressing the relationship between homelessness and mental health, and ensuring all survivors receive trauma-informed services.
The report is the result of a conference on the intersection between housing and different forms of violence against women that the NWC held in September.
A separate report published by the NWC in 2024 found that some women, in particular migrant women or international students, had been forced to enter ‘sex for rent’ arrangements with their landlords.
Legislation that will outlaw this practice is making its way through the Oireachtas.
