Women who experience domestic and family violence often have no access to financial resources, which means that their opportunities for safe housing are severely limited. Not only that: women who have no roof over their heads are exposed to the twin dangers of violence and exploitation.

For women who experience domestic violence, the absence of accessible, suitable alternative housing leaves them with only two choices:  to remain at home, where they continue to suffer from violence or to become homeless. In other words, for many, escaping violence means the loss of housing.

In April 2024, the Adva Center, together with the Forum for Public Housing and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, presented a position paper to the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women entitled, “Expanding Housing Assistance Mechanisms for Women Survivor of Violence and their Children”. The paper demonstrated how the absence of alternative housing gave abused women and their children no choice but to remain in dangerous home environments.

The fact that in Israel, domestic violence does not constitute a criterion for eligibility for social housing means that the only option for abused women is to receive housing assistance for rent from the Ministry of Construction and Housing. This assistance is predicated on having spent time in a shelter for women survivors of domestic violence, which means that women who could not find a place in a shelter or whose husbands received a court order to stay away from the family home but did not honor it were not eligible. In addition, financial assistance from the Ministry is available for no more than three years. The first year of assistance is awarded without many strings attached, but subsequent years involve presenting proof that the potential recipient is devoid of housing options. According to information supplied to the Knesset Center for Information and Research by the Ministry, if the woman and her husband are joint owners of an apartment in which the husband resides, whose value has yet to be divided between the spouses, the woman’s eligibility for housing assistance will be renewed.

According to a report published by the OECD in 2023, most countries provide survivors of violence with emergency shelter for a short period; however, in most countries, the demand is greater than the supply. The same report indicates that some states provide transitional housing for longer periods than in Israel. For example, in Hungary, there are transitional apartments located close to centers for the treatment of domestic violence that offer housing for up to five years. Figures published in 2019 indicate that the average stay in those apartments is two years, after which the women rent on the private market or receive social housing.

Some OECD member states, among them Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Japan and Australia, give precedence to survivors of domestic violence when it comes to eligibility for social housing. This policy could be adopted by Israel as well.