ABSTRACT
Abusers engage in violent behaviors that create unsafe living environments for their partners. Such violence is intended to physically, financially, and emotionally destabilize and terrorize survivors in order to maintain power and control in the relationship. As a result, survivors are forced to make difficult decisions on how best to keep themselves and their children safe. Some survivors choose to stay with their partners in order to avoid prolonged homelessness and maintain material stability, others leave their partners with hopes to find immediate housing placement. However, finding a safe and stable place to stay is difficult and such adversities can be exacerbated in cities simultaneously experiencing lack of affordable housing, high levels of homelessness, rampant gentrification, median housing costs exceeding minimum wage earnings, limited or misdirected housing funding, and uninformed, dehumanizing, or discriminatory housing polices. The aim of this chapter is to describe how abuse contributes to housing instability and explain the strategies that survivors employ to stabilize their housing. This chapter describes current housing interventions and their effectiveness in responding to survivors’ housing needs. The chapter then concludes with a discussion on how future researchers, advocates, and policy makers can integrate intersectionality in their work in order to collectively contribute to transformative housing responses that build survivors’ power and support well-being.
