The risk of women dying is higher now than for decades, because of Tory housing policies
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Version 0 of 1. Recent headlines continue to throw into relief the scale of the problem of violence against women. Two thirds of women’s refuges in England are facing closure due to the housing benefit cap, reported the Guardian on Monday. On Tuesday came the story that violence against women had reached a record high in England and Wales. Reports of domestic abuse, rape and sexual assaults rose by almost 10% to 117,568 in 2015–16. Prosecutions of stalking topped 12,986, with 70% of those involving domestic abuse. The need to help victims has never been greater, while provision has never been more threatened. Some refuges receive as much as 90% of their funding from housing benefit – with this slashed, inevitably the number of places will fall. Having fewer beds in refuges has an immediate and potentially fatal outcome: violence against women doesn’t ebb and flow with service provision. If there is no space at a hostel, women either stay in dangerous situations, or become homeless, sleeping on the streets or sofa-surfing in order to escape. Refuge, which provides safe houses for women and children escaping domestic violence, points to Office for National Statistics figures that show one woman is killed every three days by a partner; one in four women in England and Wales will experience domestic violence in their lifetime; and 8% of women are experiencing domestic abuse or violence at any one point. With nowhere to go, and with stretched services attempting to operate on a shoestring, the risk of death faced by victims of domestic violence is higher now than it has been for decades. Without help, and an escape route, women will die. The shortsightedness of the government is quite something: one day, refuges announce that government policy means they are likely to close down, and the next day, violence against women is revealed to be at record levels, underpinning the need for the very service that is being forced to close. Housing and domestic abuse are linked in multiple ways: many women have to flee their home because their partner is entitled to live there under the terms of their tenancy. While women earn on average less than men and shoulder more childcare responsibilities, their access to housing will be hampered. Even when women do find space in local refuges, moving on remains difficult with a housing shortage affecting everyone but particularly the most vulnerable. Even if you do escape, find a refuge and then move on, you may find yourself in court, as one woman did earlier in the year, fighting the government because it deems the panic room you have had installed for your own safety as “spare room” and hits you with the bedroom tax. The court ruled this was discriminatory, but had the woman complied with the policy and moved from the home specifically fitted out to ensure her safety, she would have been placed in immediate danger - in order to save the government a few pounds a week. Claiming to be serious about women’s equality is now the norm: few senior politicians can get away with dismissing the idea that men and women should have equal rights in a decent society. But the gap between what is said and what is acted on has never been wider. Put simply, the government’s policies on housing will be directly responsible for the deaths of women in coming years. Anyone serious about ending violence against women cannot pretend that cutting domestic violence services does anything other than materially risk women’s lives. Join the Guardian Housing Network to read more pieces like this and follow us on Twitter @GuardianHousing to keep up with the latest social housing insight and analysis. |