No Place to Rest: Gender-Based Violence and Homelessness
I met Samantha* (pseudonym) on a warm spring evening when I was a college student. A friend and I chatted with her for some time before learning she was unhoused, at which point we resolved to find her a place to stay. I brought Samantha into the university’s art building, where I had 24-hour access, for a place to rest while we explored options for the night. When attempts to book a room in a hotel or an Airbnb proved fruitless, I created a list of shelters that seemed like a potential fit. But as I talked Samantha through these options, she became distressed. She nervously shared with me that she’d previously been sexually assaulted in a shelter and did not consider this a viable option. I felt embarrassed. I was trying to make a plan for her without knowing her story and the specific needs she was facing. I had good intentions, but I was not operating from a perspective informed by her trauma and experience. In the end, we spent the night on two couches in the art center, falling in and out of sleep between encounters with security personnel checking for my student I.D.
The night I spent in the art center with Samantha was an introduction to some of the unique challenges faced by women experiencing homelessness. In a world that both threatens violence against women and ignores those in poverty, people situated at this intersection deserve our attention. Measures like the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and services increasingly informed by expertise on trauma can make a difference.
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) found that domestic violence is the number one reason women find themselves unhoused, forced out of their living situation to flee abuse. Among unhoused women, one in four cite domestic violence as the primary reason they became homeless. For non-White women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, the risk of violence is greater. Black women, for example, are 35% more likely than White women to experience domestic abuse. These compounded statistics worsen the plight of a person who is homeless, female, and a member of another minority identity.
Violence is not only a catalyst in the journey to homelessness but an ongoing threat. When I met Samantha, I believed sheltering to be her best option. But trauma and fear of further sexual violence ruled out this path entirely. Many women echo Samantha’s concerns around shelters, but spending the night outside also incurs risk. For women to healthily engage with available services, staff must be trauma-informed and able to cultivate an authentically and self-evident safe environment.
Reauthorizing VAWA will include specific allocations for the housing-insecure. The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) notes the protections will create avenues for those fleeing domestic violence to avoid homelessness. Perhaps most significantly, the bill would create a new division within the Department of Housing and Urban Development devoted to gender-based violence prevention, a milestone in integrating expertise to serve women experiencing homelessness. Passing VAWA is the obvious next step in the longer journey of intersectional work that serves unhoused women through holistic, trauma-informed care.
As a twenty-year-old befriending Samantha, I embodied an eagerness to help that was ignorant of the reality faced by those living on the streets. For service providers and legislators, ignorance is not an option. The struggle faced by women experiencing homelessness underscores the need for trauma-informed mental health care and systems designed to protect. Reauthorizing VAWA is a critical step in providing support and increasingly integrating gender-based violence response and prevention into services for the unhoused. To care is the beginning—but to understand, and operate from a place of understanding, is the path forward.