Half the homeless population in New Zealand are women, indeed 50,000 women in Aotearoa define themselves as homeless.
"For too long, this has been an invisible issue," says Vic Crockford, director of the Coalition to End Women’s Homelessness, the organisation behind new research that reveals the scale of the problem.
"Understandably, people often think of men when they think of people experiencing homelessness, as we are often more likely to see a single man sleeping rough. In other countries that may be right, but not in New Zealand. In Aotearoa, it is half of the story."
The report, Ngā Ara ki te Kāinga: Understanding Barriers and Solutions to Women’s Homelessness in Aotearoa, is based on a literature review of 34 sources, along with interviews from 27 current and former homeless women and frontline workers, supported by data analysis from Census 2018 and Census 2023.
Neglecting women’s experiences causes disparities that are often invisible to policy makers, and this report makes those issues plain.
In addition to the safe accommodation that women’s refuges provide, there are just three dedicated transitional housing facilities for homeless women in New Zealand, despite the need of 50,000 people across the country. With the vast majority of emergency and transitional housing mixed gendered, women often need to share housing with men, and this is often a dangerous proposition.
Sarah*, a frontline community worker in Dunedin who wishes to remain anonymous, has faced this issue. "I needed to get a homeless woman into emergency housing. She had burned a lot of bridges and has complex mental health and addiction issues. I called every single number of the list of boarding houses I had been given. I finally found the only place that would take her, and it is awful. I took a phone call confirming it while I was being interviewed by a police officer who said it was a hotbed of criminal activity and not safe.
"There was literally nowhere else. She was the only woman apart from one there. She is a staunch-looking character herself, but she still felt unsafe. I really felt for her. What do you do? They are tricky characters, the people I find housing for, but they should still feel safe. She didn’t, and there is nowhere to send them and there is nothing I can do."
This Dunedin example is typical of those in the report.
Research interviews tell of mixed emergency housing being a frightening prospect for many women facing homelessness. Their concerns about being raped or sexually assaulted are so significant that women choose to sleep on the street.
A frontline worker quoted in the report says: "For women who are traumatised, and I would say everyone would be [victims of] sexual violence, is that ... if not almost always, [the violence is] perpetrated by men. So, if you have a trauma history, and then access a room of people who are super vulnerable and are overwhelmingly men, it’s not rocket science to figure out you’re not going to walk inside it. Even if you’re hungry, even if you’re homeless."
Unfortunately, the streets have these same risks. To alleviate it, the report documents women sleeping during the day, when it is safer. At night, they (and their children, if they have them) wake up. Unfortunately, at this time showers and public toilets are often closed. Menstruation, something unthought of in other accounts of homelessness in New Zealand, makes this situation particularly untenable.
Across New Zealand, the situation is dire.
The research was born from initial work done by the team at community housing peak body, Community Housing Aotearoa, where Crockford was chief executive until 2022.
"I saw so much in that role. And I saw what was missing too. Along with the other women that now make up the Coalition to End Women’s Homelessness, I could see the gaps in the response and research, and how, with some consideration, we could make positive impacts for women. It doesn’t need to be the way it is."
Dunedin, historically immune from these big city issues, has lately been more like a poster-child for what is wrong, with a very visible homeless community that were, until recently, living at the Oval.
Thanks to tireless local reporting and community pressure, many of the slum-lords of the past have closed their doors. These have given way to commercial property agents, who, understandably, want a return on investment and less problematic tenants. But this leaves frontline workers like Sarah calling down a list of housing providers who won’t take her clients.
The Dunedin Night Shelter estimates that 100 to 150 beds that were available for the most vulnerable in the city have been taken out of the housing market in the past 18 months to two years.
"Some of those boarding houses weren’t the best places, but they were a roof over their heads, and tended to be better than a tent," Night Shelter Manager David McKenzie says.
The Night Shelter has seen a huge change in their operations in the past two years as a result of fewer services and support available in the city, particularly in regards to women. McKenzie says that, historically, the Night Shelter would only cater to one or two women every two weeks. "Now they are here all the time. Before the issue was hidden; women wouldn’t be seen, but that is certainly changing."
For women, McKenzie says, "there is the whole predatory factor, that they are subjected to in a pretty brutal way ... it is most certainly a different dynamic being a female on the street. We feel quite sick about some of the situations we see, to be honest".
This report tells us many things — that homeless people are not a monolith, that wāhine Māori are particularly vulnerable, that single mothers and both younger and older women are at risk, that women suffer homelessness in a unique way and that emergency housing does not serve them well.
Crockford has a simple message for Dunedin and New Zealand alike: "The results of the research are clear. We need housing and support services that are about the people, not about the programme. We can’t keep responding to homelessness as if it was a homogeneous issue, because if we do, needs aren’t met, particularly those of women and their kids. At the moment we have something that is inflexible, where contracts and funding come with too many restrictions and not enough funding for intensive wrap-around support. This needs to change. Everyone has the right to a home and to be safe in that home."
*Not her real name.
