As Londoners what do we picture when we hear the word ‘homeless’? Many of us will think of people sleeping rough, and we’ll likely picture a man. At a push, we might picture a woman with children in cramped, worn-out temporary accommodation.
We don’t picture women forced to live on the streets but so afraid that they will walk all night, rather than risk going to sleep; women who are concealed for safety, both from those who pose a threat, and from services which could offer support.
Visibly sleeping rough is dangerous for anyone, let alone for women, who are at particularly high risk of harassment and violence. The alternatives aren’t necessarily safer and still involve violence and invisibility. Desperate not to have to sleep outside, they can instead be exploited in exchange for accommodation.
Thanks to the generosity of Evening Standard readers, a group of organisations are now working to change this.
The Women’s Development Unit is a partnership between The Connection at St Martin’s, a charity supporting people who sleep rough and experience homelessness in Central London, and Solace Women’s Aid, a London service for women experiencing violence.
We believe everyone – regardless of gender or whether they are experiencing homelessness – deserves to be treated as a person. Together, we aim to increase understanding of women’s experiences of homelessness in the Capital and how they can be better supported.
The Women’s Development Unit is funded by the Evening Standard’s Homeless Fund, managed by The London Community Foundation. Launched in 2019 from the Christmas fundraising campaign, the fund raised over £1m with the support of Evening Standard and Independent readers, which has since been distributed to homeless causes across London, such as ours.
Over the past year, the Women’s Development Unit has spoken to a wealth of organisations, as well as women with lived experience of homelessness, using their perspectives to develop a strategy for women’s homelessness in London, launching this week. Our focus is the women who are too often overlooked and not seen at all.
Specific approaches to women’s needs are astonishingly rare; existing strategies insufficiently address women’s needs, there are few specific services for women and limited data split by gender, which limits our ability to respond. Instead, it is women who are often blamed for not being found or supported properly by the systems which have failed her, which label her as ‘difficult’ and ‘hard to reach’.
The fact is we’re not looking hard enough; we’re not listening to women; we’re not even counting them.
This is why The Women’s Development Unit has developed an approach for women’s homelessness in London. This brings together recommendations about the specialist services we need to expand, the different ways we can offer support and how we should all be thinking more about women.
Women’s homelessness is gaining attention and, as we saw with the new Domestic Abuse Act in 2021, we can make real change. On 11th March we will launch our strategy for ending women’s homelessness in London and, with it, we hope to transform how we address homelessness.
Our strategy proposes actions which can be taken by a range of people across London, from policy makers and commissioners to service providers and practitioners, to achieve the steps needed for women to be fully supported. This includes:
• Improving processes from the top down, making women’s homelessness a priority, whether in regional governing bodies, local authorities or support organisations.
• Building more strategies for women and ensuring existing homelessness strategies specifically include them.
• Improving data collection on women’s homelessness.
• Improving services for women and vastly increasing the number of them, ensuring they are safe and of good quality and that women can easily access them. This includes women’s drop-in spaces across London, single-sex accommodation and specialist intensive support which can meet their needs.
• Better equipping the people who are already working hard to support women, through training to better understand women’s experience, and support and advice when working with women facing high risk of violence. This isn’t just homelessness services, but the many services a woman may need, including GPs and hospitals, housing departments, and benefits offices.
• Involving the voices of women who have experienced homelessness to ensure service provision truly meets the needs of those it aims to support.
We strongly believe that the answers exist and are, in many cases, being demonstrated by expert but small-scale projects pushing for innovation. With commitment to and an understanding of women’s homelessness, together we can make an immediate difference to women in London, end women’s homelessness and, ultimately, achieve the goal of ending homelessness for everyone.
