Women’s housing precarity in the context of domestic and family violence: an analysis of Australian policy

Housing provision for women escaping domestic and family violence (DFV) has become a salient aspect of government policy in Australia and globally. This has occurred amid ongoing political failure to deliver sufficient and affordable housing, contributing to precarity in housing markets. This article examines how women’s DFV-related housing precarity is represented in contemporary Australian Commonwealth and New South Wales policy. The article reveals competing representations of this issue between housing and criminal justice policies, producing uneven effects for DFV victim-survivors. Under the dominant governing rationality of neoliberalism, the housing assistance available for this group is primarily crisis or private market focused. In proposing such temporary and private forms of assistance, the policies produce a representation of DFV-related housing precarity that overly individualizes a predominantly structural problem. The article argues that the gap between symbolic policy commitments and practical steps to address housing shortages needs to be narrowed to sharpen the focus on the varied housing needs of women fleeing DFV.