A women’s refuge that provides accommodation in Newcastle and Lake Macquarie is using Anti-Poverty Week, ending October 20, to raise awareness around a form of hardship it says is changing the demographic of clients using the service.
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Kelly Hansen, CEO of Nova for Women and Children, said “gendered poverty” was pushing an increase in older women seeking help from the service, and was also reflected in the financial stress of younger women fleeing domestic abuse.
“We all know that homelessness is caused by poverty,” Ms Hansen said.
“If we don’t address poverty and we don’t address gendered poverty this is just a cycle that’s going to continue.
“We’re also keeping women trapped in domestic violent relationships because of that.”
Gendered poverty is caused by the economic disadvantage experienced by women, Ms Hansen said.
“There has been a gendered wage gap, which should not be here in this day and age. Women are often doing unpaid domestic care, they’ll have on-and-off work. Often women are in the casual work force as well, and don’t have the same entitlements,” she said.
“So we have a lot of women that have not had the same opportunity for career and job opportunities.
“That is your gendered poverty.”
Professor Julie Byles, director of the Priority Research Centre for Generational Health and Ageing at the University of Newcastle, said women over the age of 50 were now the group of Australians most likely to present at homelessness services for the first time.
“Because of the housing affordability crisis, because of the lack of public housing, because of the increasing numbers of women who are entering old age as single women and because of the increasing reliance on self-funded retirement and reducing home ownership… their disadvantages have accumulated to the point they are homeless for the first time in later life,” she said.
In the previous financial year more than one in seven women, or 288 of 1400 women, who sought help from Nova were between the ages of 46 and 85.
Domestic violence was the leading cause of women seeking help, with 410 women presenting at the service for that reason.
Women in housing crisis or experiencing housing affordability stress accounted for 405 women using the service.
Nova opened its doors to the public on Tuesday to inform people about homelessness. A couch surfer and a rough sleeper’s bed were set up in the service’s Newcastle West office.
Ms Hansen said that while, at the very least, “a couple of days” of accommodation could be found for homeless homeless women presenting to the service, long-term housing was harder to secure.
She said it was particularly difficult to find housing for women living on the government’s unemployment allowance, Newstart, which provides around $270 per week.
“We’re battling the system along with them at that point,” she said.
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