Crisis accommodation for family violence victims inundated with migrant women

Migrant women, who often have no access to other forms of housing due to eligibility requirements excluding those on some types of visas, are staying for up to two years in refuges where as women with access to social housing would normally stay between three to six months.

The news comes as the federal government prepares to redirect funding from a support scheme to help migrant women, despite many in the migrant community suffering serious domestic violence often in silence as threats of deportation are used to control them.

While there are domestic violence provisions in the legislation for some women facing these situations, they're difficult to enact.

Migrant women unable to access other forms of housing are resorting to living in refuges for years at a time. But in doing so, they're taking the place of two to three other women who might need crisis accommodation in that time, according to Beryl Women’s Refuge manager Robyn Martin.

The bottleneck in the system is so severe Ms Martin said they’re hearing more and more reports of women with children sleeping in their cars as they are unable to access crisis accommodation services.

Last year at Beryl’s, about 42 per cent of those who accessed their services were migrant women.

“Generally those women are staying anywhere between 12 months and two years,” Ms Martin said.

“What that means for other women who might want to access the service in the community is that there is no space for those women, because we’re working with this other group who are not moving through the system as quickly as we would like because of the complexities of their needs, with domestic violence being just part of that.

“We know that women are sleeping in cars with their children because there is no accommodation here in the ACT,” Ms Martin said.

“We know that women with babies are sleeping in cars. We know that women are staying in unsafe environments because there is nowhere for them to go.”

Ms Martin said these stories were becoming “very common”.

“We’ve had women who have come here that have spent a week in their car with their kids, and that’s more than one child.”

ACT Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence Yvette Berry acknowledged that domestic and family violence was a leading cause of homelessness.

She said of all the new clients supported by OneLink, the central point of contact to access crisis and homelessness services in the ACT, the largest single priority continued to be those experiencing domestic and family violence.

In the current financial year, the ACT government is providing more than $4.6 million to eight specialist homelessness services to provide accommodation and support to women with or without children escaping domestic violence.

“These services tell us that they continue to work with migrant women and children with little or no income that have complex immigration status and visa requirements,” Ms Berry said.

“Migrant women often present to the homelessness sector with complex immigration issues, with little or no income while they wait for a decision about their visa status, they can experience significant delays in being able to transition from crisis accommodation into stable housing,” Ms Berry said.

“This impacts on the period of support provided by the homelessness sector, which can be lengthy given the long time periods it takes for visa applications to be processed including appeals process and assessments.”

She said the ACT government has “a long-standing commitment to support refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrant community members”.

But while an applicant for ACT social housing doesn’t have to hold permanent residency or citizenship, they must meet eligibility criteria including that “each applicant’s presence in Australia is not subject to any time limit imposed by law”.

Ms Berry said women and children in need of support are encouraged to contact the Gateway Services for housing-related support on 133 427 or to visit their offices at 153 Emu Bank Belconnen. Telephone interpreter services are available upon request.