PRIORITIES

1.       Increase public and community housing to 10% of the total housing stock by 2050, including housing configured and targeted to women in each State/Territory, in particular women and children fleeing domestic violence, single women, single older women, single mothers, Indigenous women, women with disabilities and CALD women including refugees and those on bridging or temporary visas.

2.       Make affordable housing truly affordable by legislating a definition in the Housing Australia Future Fund to cap rents at 30% of income for people on the lowest incomes.

3.       Provide more support for older people at risk of homelessness by funding specialist support services for those who can’t access aged care support due to insecure housing.

4.       Ensure adequate and sustainable funding to meet demand for homelessness services while ensuring that that funding goes to services that are appropriately specialised, competent, accessible, culturally appropriate and safe for the full range of diverse groups of women and children who need them. WEL calls on the Federal Government to commit to increased funding for homelessness services and women’s domestic violence refuges, and rapid access to housing and support.

5.       Make homes climate safe by prioritising retrofitting of public and community housing to improve energy performance and withstand extreme weather events.

6.       Introduce a framework to promote systematic consideration of gender in future research, policy, and practice fields related to housing and homelessness.

RATIONALE

Australia is facing a crisis in housing affordability. At the same time, women’s inequality causes disadvantage in accessing housing and greater risk of homelessness, with heightened housing disadvantage for women facing additional issues of injustice and inequality.

Australia’s housing crisis

The crisis affects all tenures. There is a lack of affordable private rental housing, with steeply rising rents and very low vacancy rates. As purchase prices have risen in relation to income, home ownership rates have fallen and more people are carrying their mortgage debt into retirement, placing additional pressure on the rental market. In recent decades there has also been reduced availability of social housing and a continuing fall in the proportion of Australian households who live in social housing, from over 7% of all households in 1991 [3] to 4.1% in 2024 [4]. Between 1991 and 2023, lettings by social housing providers declined from 52,000 to 32,000, a reduction of 38%, or a slump of 60% proportionate to population [5]. Access to social housing is tightly targeted with long waiting lists. This change is of particular importance because social housing accommodates socio-economically disadvantaged households who would be at risk of homelessness in the private rental market. Women comprise 63% of social housing main tenants [6].

These factors have led to significant stress for individuals and households, and the emergence of a cohort of people on low incomes who are in precarious housing situations, for whom an adverse event may trigger homelessness. It has also led to the growth of a ‘missing middle’ of people who are neither poor enough to qualify for housing assistance nor wealthy enough to secure housing as they age. Many of these people are private renters or live in non-standard housing such as caravan parks. 

Access to safe and secure housing is a human right. Australia does not yet have a Human Rights Act [7] (see WEL’s Human Rights policy).

Women’s disadvantage in housing

As a result of the crisis in housing, access to safe, secure and affordable housing in Australia is deeply unequal, and women’s economic and other disadvantage means that women are disproportionately disadvantaged in accessing housing. Women experience economic disadvantage and poverty from multiple factors, including lower wages, gaps in paid work and superannuation and women’s greater responsibility for caring for children and other family members. Women’s weekly earnings are 11.5% less than men’s [8]. In addition, women’s experiences of domestic and other gendered violence including the impacts of trauma, injury, dislocation, financial abuse and disproportionate loss of wealth upon separation cause immediate and long-term economic and other disadvantages that reverberate throughout women’s lifetimes.

Women are less likely to be able to save a deposit to buy a home, take longer to do so, and are less likely to own a home in retirement. Older women repaying a mortgage experience higher levels of mortgage stress than their male counterparts.

The number of women experiencing homelessness continues to rise at a faster rate than for men. Between the 2016 and 2021 Censuses, women’s homelessness increased by 10.1% compared to 1.6% for men [9]. The most dramatic increases are in the number of women aged 34-44 years (an increase of 20%) and young women aged 12 to 18 years (an increase of 18%) [10]. The largest overall group of homeless women (11,097 women) are younger women aged 25 to 34 years. 

While the 2016 Census saw the strongest increase (by 51 per cent) in homelessness among older women aged 65-74, this stabilised in the 2021 Census [11]. It is likely that this is due to COVID factors [12], and older women remain one of the highest growing groups experiencing homelessness over the decade, with systemic factors continuing to put this cohort at risk. 

The experience of homelessness itself involves trauma and deprivation and is damaging to people in many ways, and is linked to poorer health, difficulty in maintaining supportive social relationships, violence, reduced autonomy, loss of furniture and household items and diminished accommodation and other options over time [13]. For women, homelessness often involves a series of temporary unstable arrangements where they have limited autonomy, choice or control over their living situations, including situations that are unsuitable or unsafe and that caused fear and trauma [14].

Women at particular risk of housing instability and homelessness include women in a range of situations, who are on low incomes, in casual work and/or experience other disadvantage, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, single mothers and their children, women with disabilities, older women in private rental and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women. Single mothers face particular barriers to accessing housing as they need a dwelling with enough bedrooms for their children, and because finding shared housing with an unrelated housemate may not be an option.

Women and children escaping domestic violence are the largest group of those experiencing homelessness. Domestic violence is the single largest reason for women’s housing instability and homelessness, making up over 40% of people, overwhelmingly women and children, requesting assistance from specialist homelessness agencies [15]. Many women experiencing violence make the momentous decision to leave their homes, often with children, for their safety. Only 3.2% of these women and children are accessing the long-term housing that they need [16]. Lack of access to affordable housing is a reason why women remain in or return to violent and dangerous situations. Women on temporary visas who experience violence and homelessness are ineligible for most forms of assistance and lack avenues to achieve safety and stability.

While many women do approach homelessness services, women’s homelessness is often hidden, with many not assisted by services. Women also generally avoid visibly sleeping rough, and few are assisted by programs for rough sleepers. Instead, they stay temporarily with family, friends and acquaintances or in other temporary places such as hostels or house sitting; remain at home in a violent situation; live in severely overcrowded dwellings; live in a car or sleep outside in hidden locations. As a result, women’s homelessness may be unrecorded and its extent obscured.

There is a need to ensure that suitable housing is available for all women and children in need, and that if women do experience domestic violence and/or homelessness, that services are appropriately specialised and resourced, competent, accessible, culturally appropriate and safe. In 2021 it was estimated that each year there is an immediate need for around 17,000 additional social housing dwellings for women fleeing domestic violence alone [17]. Commonwealth and State governments have pledged new investments in social housing that are estimated to add around 50,000 dwellings this decade, which would halt the decline in the proportion of social housing, but would remain small relative to both the scale of unmet need, and housing and homelessness advocates calls for social rental homes to form 10% of all homes [18]. 

While there have been some steps to respond to climate issues for social housing tenants [19], current plans fall far short of including all social dwellings. 

Lack of gender-responsive 

Despite the significance of gender in housing outcomes there is no comprehensive approach to understanding gender and its role in housing. There is a need to improve gender-responsive data, evidence building, policy making and practice in housing and homelessness fields [20].

 UPDATED: JULY 2026

Definitions [ 21]

Social housing is government subsidised rental housing. In Australia in recent decades, it has mainly been available to people on very low incomes, and who often have experienced homelessness, family violence or have other complex needs. Social housing is made up of two types of housing: 

·       public housing, which is owned and managed by State and Territory Governments, and 

·       community housing, which is managed (and often owned) by not-for-profit organisations. 

Defining what is affordable housing is a much less precise exercise, as in Australia it doesn’t have a common meaning across jurisdictions and government programs.  

For some jurisdictions, 'affordability’ may be defined based on a household’s ability to pay (determined by the household’s income), for others it may be defined as a housing rent or price that is lower than the prevailing local market rate. Some jurisdictions refer to rental housing only, for others it includes home ownership as well as rental. 

Previously (in 2005) a meeting of Australian Housing, Local Government and Planning Ministers had described affordable housing as ‘housing which is affordable for low and moderate income households across home ownership, private rental as well as public rental tenures … The benchmark for affordability is 25 to 30 per cent of the income of these target groups.’ 

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