The Cost of Leaving

For too many women in Australia, leaving violence does not mean finding safety. It means entering poverty.

Every day, women weigh an impossible choice: remain in a home where they are unsafe, or leave knowing they may have nowhere affordable to go. Leaving violence often means losing income, housing, possessions, employment, community and financial independence all at once.

Family and domestic violence is the leading reason women and children leave their homes in Australia (AIHW, 2024–25). It is not only a safety crisis; it is a housing crisis, an economic crisis and a prevention challenge.

Almost two in three women who have experienced violence from a previous partner leave the family home when the relationship ends, and many are forced to rely on friends or relatives for accommodation, highlighting how fragile housing security becomes after leaving violence.

The scale of demand on the system is significant. In 2024–25, around 117,000 people accessing specialist homelessness services had experienced family and domestic violence (AIHW), the largest presenting group within the system. The vast majority were women and children.

Behind these figures are women trying to rebuild lives while carrying the cost of escaping violence.

Leaving violence rarely means simply changing address. It can mean giving up employment, withdrawing children from school, leaving behind support networks and starting again with little financial security. Legal costs, childcare, disrupted work and insecure housing quickly compound the trauma of abuse.

The cost of family and domestic violence is not borne by victim-survivors alone. It is carried by all Australians.

When women cannot access safe and stable housing, pressure shifts elsewhere - to crisis accommodation, homelessness services, health systems, child protection, policing and justice responses. We continue paying for violence long after the immediate crisis has passed.

In 2016, KPMG estimated that violence against women and children cost the Australian economy $22 billion. With rising rates of family and domestic violence, the economic burden on business, government and the community is widely understood to be significantly higher today, including in health care, justice, lost productivity and social services.

This is where our work provides a unique perspective. Through Communicare and White Ribbon Australia, we see both the immediate and devastating consequences of violence and the opportunities to prevent it. We are the only organisation that has the end to end offering which brings the prevention of family domestic violence and interventions under one umbrella. 

At Tuart House, Communicare’s women and children’s refuge in Busselton, we see daily the profound impact displacement has on families seeking safety, stability, and a chance to rebuild their lives.

We also know that crisis response alone cannot solve this issue. More crisis and transitional housing is urgently needed, alongside a greater investment in prevention which includes education, community activation and advocacy.

Programs that intervene early and work directly with men who choose to use violence are a critical part of the solution.

Communicare’s Breathing Space program is one example. As a residential men's behaviour change program, it provides men who use violence with intensive support to address the attitudes and behaviours driving their abuse. Its purpose is simple but profound: fewer women and children forced to leave their homes.

This work is grounded in an important truth: women and children should not bear the burden of displacement because of another person's use of violence. If we want to reduce the demand for refuges and crisis accommodation, we must also invest in programs that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place.

Australia is doing more than ever before to respond to family and domestic violence. Governments have invested in housing, emergency accommodation and national action plans. But demand continues to outpace supply.

Every act of violence prevented means one less family experiencing trauma, one less child forced to change schools, one less woman facing homelessness, and one less household forced to rebuild their lives from nothing.

Prevention is not separate from housing policy, it is part of it. 

Housing provides women with the safety and stability they need to rebuild their lives.  Prevention addresses the drivers of violence and reduces the number of women who will need those services in the future.

Women should never have to choose between escaping violence and facing homelessness. Safety should never come at the cost of having a secure place to live.