Women’s Shelters: A Closer Look

Growing Strong

WOMEN’S SHELTERS: A CLOSER LOOK

Women’s homelessness, exacerbated by domestic violence, is often (inadequately) met with the solution of women’s shelters by feminist organisers. Women’s shelters, often over capacity and under-resourced, cannot adequately respond to the problem of women’s homelessness. They do not tackle the core issues of capitalism and colonialism which inevitably create homeless and dispossessed people. Homelessness is inherent to capitalism because public space is commodified to create profits, so housing is bought and sold, rather than existing as a basic provision to the people. The ongoing colonialism of so-called Australia dispossesses Aboriginal people from their land and country. Family violence is at least 45 times more likely for Aboriginal people, exacerbating housing insecurity.

Without a safe place to live, educational opportunities, health and wellbeing decline. When activists make attempts to address homelessness and emergency housing, especially for victims of domestic violence, we need to be clear that without ending capitalism and colonialism these problems can’t be solved. Capitalism necessitates a reserve army of labour whereby there will always be a percentage of the population who are un- or underemployed to maintain low wages. Housing functions in a similar way; despite there being an excess of housing in relation to the population needing to be housed, houses remain empty and the rich own multiple properties while others sit on the streets. This bleak situation is exacerbated by neoliberal governments reducing welfare assistance and cutting funding to public housing. Women’s refuges are an example of a temporary, feminist solution to certain homelessness situations which are created by private property and patriarchy. Despite their usefulness, women’s refuges are a strong example of how, short of dismantling capitalism and colonialism, no attempt to solve homelessness will be ultimately successful.

The first women’s refuge in Australia was established in Glebe in 1974 by Anne Summers and other women involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement. They squatted in a church-owned property and cleaned it to create ‘Elsie Women’s Refuge Night Shelter’, a temporary, safe home for women and children who were victims of domestic violence. Elsie’s opening coincided with growing consciousness around family and sexual violence, the ‘Women in a Violent Society’ forum and the first Royal Commission into the topic happened that same year. In the following years, dozens of women’s refuges following similar models were established in major cities across Australia. Today, family and sexual violence is a universally held feminist concern, and these shelters continue to exist and provide an important service.

There are intrinsic problems in the provision of services and the women’s liberation movement of the 70s and 80s which ran the refuges. The people involved were primarily white, middleclass university students and didn’t accommodate the needs and difficulties of people outside this singular, largely privileged group. Ultimately, the refuge movement could be classist, racist, and unwelcoming to some groups of people who needed their services most. While there was a growing consciousness towards gay and lesbian rights, embodied in Australia’s first Mardi Gras in the same decade, trans women were unwelcome and the movement was largely cis-normative. Additionally, while there are no official statistics of the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accessing the service, anecdotal stories suggest that few felt able to use the service. Safe and stable housing was, and continues to be, more critical for Indigenous people who have had their homes destroyed, land stolen and children removed since colonisation began. Homelessness disproportionately affects people who face multiple axes of oppression, but forms of oppression other than being a woman were often ignored.

Growing Strong

WOMEN’S SHELTERS: A CLOSER LOOK

Despite not being perfect solutions to are long term goals for housing activists. contradictory to Elie’s historic activist the issue of domestic violence or sexual aims. assault many women have found refuges In 2014 the NSW Government introduced safe places to live when in danger, and a series of controversial policies that Feminists should pay more attention public opinion has changed on the matter centralised the control of housing services, in housing-related issues so that any due to the positive media the refuges including the Going Home, Staying Home provision of services accompanies an have received. Therefore, today there is a bill. The University of Sydney Women’s activist campaign that fights against broadly empathetic public view towards Collective campaigned against this bill as homelessness and sexual assault. To do this women experiencing domestic violence. part of a NSW inter-university campaign we need to engage in building a militant, The refuges are an attempt to alleviate in July 2014; Students for Women’s Only community-based, direct action approach the burden of insecure housing, but they Services. The campaign focused on to the issue, joining renters unions or are ill-placed and insufficient to meet the ensuring that services are still specialised organisations fighting similar things, broader need of universal housing. They and specific to women, without external putting more pressure on the government do not fix the root of the issue which arises intervention of groups whose beliefs for women’s services. Women’s shelters from the capitalist colonial state where are contrary to the intended aims of the are currently necessary, but they can’t be property is a commodity and Indigenous refuge. This campaign was unsuccessful, relied on to solve the housing crisis, nor people are violently dispossessed. Despite and the passing of the bill saw disastrous sexual or domestic violence. Addressing women’s refuges and public housing not implications which had been predicted by colonialism and capitalism are major tasks, directly contributing to the broader goals of activists. Smaller organisations were forced but feminists should be clear that their abolishing private property and dismantling to compete with larger organisations, constant theft and dispossession makes capitalism, they shouldn’t be shut down. and unable to receive direct funding housing for all and ending sexual assault In Australia, public housing should be the themselves. The bill forced the closure of impossible. service that addresses this issue, however, some homelessness services, and many it is inadequate in supply, disrespected by independent refuges changed ownership. politicians and society, and undermined Elsie’s women’s refuge was one such by private property interests. Increasing service and is now run by St Vincent de the number of public housing dwellings is Paul, an organisation with a significant and urgently needed, as well as ensuring that continued history of homophobia. While women’s refuges aren’t run by people who it still operates as a shelter for women are personally removed from the struggles who have experienced domestic violence, of those who they try to serve. Community- the centralised management based transformative justice, socialism by the church is and Indigenous sovereignty