Domestic violence is rapidly becoming one of the major causes of a growing homelessness problem on the Border.
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Wodonga’s Junction Support Services has especially noted this trend among young mums under 25 over the past year.
It provided support for 89 young parents under the age of 25 between July 2016 and April 2017.
Youth services manager Katharine Hodgens said it was significant that about half of this number – which does not include their children – were homeless because of domestic and family violence.
While young mums have been the main focus, some of Junction’s homeless clients were single dads.
Mr Hodgens said this needed to be seen within the context of the area having “a higher prevalence of family violence”, a fact that has been borne out in Victoria Police crime statistics over recent years.
Police previously have attributed some of that increase to a great willingness by people to come forward and make a complaint about an incident.
Ms Hodgens said Junction was seeing some clients from outside the area.
“They feel safer knowing that they’re not in the same state as the perpetrator.”
Ms Hodgens said that for a lot of women, especially young women, they simply did not have the awareness that violence in the home “is not OK” and “it’s not normal to be treated like that”.
“But then there’s other women that have entered a relationship thinking that it’s great and it turns out not that way at all,” she said.
Ms Hodgens said it just wasn’t possible for everybody to leave a violent domestic situation.
“It’s really hard because a lot of these men aren’t always perpetrators of violence, it’s a portion of who they area.
She had a horrible history where there was a family violence situation, he took the kids, took everything from her, turned everyone against her. She ended up self-harming and in a mental health facility and dealing with sexual exploitation
- Junction Support Service's Katharine Hodgens, on one homeless woman who sought help
“And it’s really hard to leave because you don’t actually see that there’s anything wrong with it, because he can be horrible but he can also be loving and make you feel good about yourself.”
Ms Hodgens said what made family violence such a "really difficult topic” was there often was no change in men’s behaviour “and if it is, it’s court ordered”.
She noted her contact with one woman seeking help after moving to the area from Melbourne.
“She had a horrible history where there was a family violence situation, he took the kids, took everything from her, turned everyone against her. She ended up self-harming and in a mental health facility and dealing with sexual exploitation,” Ms Hodgens said.
“She found herself in a situation she never thought she would be and had it all together until that point.
“It was only that she realised there were services that could have prevented her getting to that point where she nearly died.”
Albury homeless support and crisis accommodation agency yes unlimited has had more than 1000 people come through the doors at The Hub in Macauley Street over the past 12 months.
While domestic and family violence is a leading cause of homelessness for its clients – about a quarter are in this position – the leading factor is mental illness.
About half fit into this category, while overall 40 per cent of clients are under the age of 25.
But yes unlimited chief executive Di Glover said it was clear the “the prevalence of domestic violence” played a significant role in why people found themselves having to seek out crisis accommodation.
But Ms Glover said there were other factors that many people probably did not even consider.
“On a day-to-day level I’m thinking about people being released from jail, people being exited from Juvenile Justice, from the health system, from hospitals, from mental health,” she said.
“Even (domestic violence campaigner and 2015 Australian of the Year) Rosie Batty is talking now about the failure of the mental health system in her particular situation as well – that if those services had been more available to her husband at the time,” she said of Ms Batty’s former partner killing their son.
Ms Glover said sometimes it should come down a bit of common sense, such as with respect to people leaving jail.
“It might be serving time in NSW and being paroled to stay in the state but (the person) may have family and a perfectly good place to live in Wangaratta or Wodonga.”
A significant of homeless cases on the Border are triaged and then managed on an on-going basis by the Department of Family and Community Services in Albury.
Housing services manager Michael Whiteside said there clearly a homelessness crisis on the Border, a development of only the past few years.
“We’ve always had homeless people in Albury, but it hasn’t been a crisis. I can’t quantify it but it’s grown quite a lot in in terms of numbers and dollars. Both of them have increased a lot. And I don’t think this is unique to Albury.”
Team leader Allan Mason said the complexity involved in homelessness meant there was “no silver bullet to all this. We know that with some of our demographics such as women and children that domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness.”