Australians escaping domestic violence face a double struggle, with thousands of victims also dealing with homelessness, a new study shows.
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More than a third of the 520,000 Australians who sought help from homelessness services between 2011 and 2014, did so because of domestic violence, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
And in a sign of the strain domestic violence places on community services, only nine per cent of domestic violence clients were able to get long-term accommodation when it was first requested.
"Domestic and family violence cause considerable disruption to the lives of Australian families," AIHW spokesman Tim Beard said.
"This puts them at an increased risk of falling into homelessness."
The report, released on Wednesday, finds that the majority (110,000) of domestic violence victims seeking homelessness support were adult women. Of this group, about 45,000 also had children and 24,000were young women (under 24) on their own.
About 12,000 adult men presented for help, with about 30 per cent also identifying mental health as the reason for seeking assistance.
The study also showed that 75 per cent of all female domestic violence victims and 86 per cent of male victims seeking homelessness help were born in Australia.
Domestic Violence NSW chief executive Moo Baulch said the figures showed the system was "incredibly stretched", adding increases in demand could be expected in coming years as more public attention was given to domestic violence.
Homelessness NSW chief executive Katherine McKernan said the general lack of affordable housing in Australia was compounding the problem and that it also clogged up the crisis system as people could not be moved on to more permanent situations.
She stressed that now that community expectations had been raised about help for domestic violence, "there needs to be resources". Ms McKernan said Homelessness NSW was aware of older women who had left violent relationships, only to return after they found it too difficult to get set up on their own.
Minister for Women Michaelia Cash said the federal government had recently provided $230 million to extend the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness for two years until mid-2017, under which domestic violence victims were made a priority for funds.
She added that the government also provides about $1.3 billion a year to the states through the National Affordable Housing Agreement and that last year it specifically set aside a further $17 million to help victims of domestic violence stay in their homes.
"This will help to mitigate the likelihood of women becoming homess after escaping violence," Senator Cash said.
Both Ms Baulch and Ms McKernan cautioned that even though there was a new emphasis on helping victims stay in their own homes - kicking out perpetrators instead - this approach did not work for everybody.
Ms McKernan said women often had difficulty keeping up rent or mortgage payments due to loss of income.
