Sadia: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us once again. My name is Sadia Hameed. I am a prolific podcaster for FiLiA and I'm joined today by Zara. Hi Zara. 

Zara: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. It's great. 

Sadia: Thank you for coming on. Actually, I'm just going to hand straight over to you, so do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Zara: I am campaigning, I'm heading a campaign to change housing, specifically homelessness, application policy towards survivors of abuse, which covers the scope of domestic violence and trafficking, which obviously predominantly affects women the most. And so I'm just trying to nationally support the campaign to get the legislation changed.

Sadia: Yeah. 

Zara: But on a local level, I'm just trying to get council policy changed. And that has been spurred on by my own experiences with homelessness and having to flee abuse and trafficking. 

I think, at the crux of it, the legislation at the moment doesn't protect survivors at all. There's absolutely no real safeguarding legislation there, because when you present as homeless, you go through various stages of assessment and the final stages is to decide whether or not you are going to be allowed the full duty to house, which is priority need. But you're then subjected to these interlinking assessments, which are completely up to the council's discretion, really, of how they conduct it and come to their conclusion. 

There's one called the Vulnerability Test, and there's one called the Intentional Homelessness Test. The one that I have been up against is the Intentional Homelessness Test, and that is, it's a test to say whether or not it would be reasonable to continue to occupy where I was previously. Which I had to flee, due to domestic violence, and trafficking and stalking issues, and I mean, like that question in and of itself shouldn't even be a question, like, that you ask, especially not when someone's fleeing violence, you know, and perpetration. 

Sadia: Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, you said that you are currently going through it right now. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, like what the situation was and how you ended up in the situation that you're in right now?

Zara: My history is that when I was a child there was domestic violence in the home, and I first presented at a council when I was 17 years old, to ask for help with housing. But because at that time there was just absolutely no safeguarding at all, it was even worse than it is now, they just didn't have any understanding or training in that, so they didn't see it for what it was. And they told me to go back to the home where there was violence and conflict, and make-up with my parents.  

Sadia: Sorry, just a quick question in between; how much training and awareness do they have now, of safeguarding issues and domestic abuse issues?

Zara: It varies, borough to borough, because again, it's up to their discretion what training they implement. But this is one of the things I'm campaigning for locally, and eventually I'd love for it to be just national legislation as well, is for the frontline workers in the housing department to be trauma informed, every single one of them, trauma informed and to have specific training around trafficking and domestic violence. Because yeah, at the moment, most boroughs don't have that much in-depth training. I think they have a standardised format that they might use, but they don't have enough knowledge to make such a life-changing decision on someone's circumstances. 

Sadia: Yeah, I mean like, I'm aware that if you work for any statutory service or any government body, you would be given generic safeguarding training, but it's not in depth, it doesn't necessarily explore domestic abuse in any great detail. It's very, very generic and actually it's just a tick box exercise. You know, this is the training that you have to do before you start, and I get the impression that not many people take it seriously, unless they're personally impacted by something or have a personal interest in it. And that's going to be a very, very small fraction of people that are working in housing. You know, why would they go and work in housing if they were interested in domestic abuse and women's issues? So that's also a major problem too. 

Zara: Wanted to address what you just said as well, in that, I agree, I think that there needs to be multiple engagement with all of the frontline services when it comes to housing. But at the moment, that doesn't seem to be the case of what's happening. And so you've got these segregated services that are not overlapping, but there has been proven, statistically, to be a huge overlap between domestic violence that women suffer and homelessness. You know, it’s proven, now we know that this is the case, but that people are just not joining up the dots enough. So yeah, I completely agree with your point.  

Sadia: It's hard actually, because at times I feel like they just don't give a shit, if I'm honest, we know that this is going to be the case.

You know, if a woman's being abused, is she going to stay there? She might not leave immediately, but when she does, she does need somewhere to go. And if there isn't anywhere for her to go, naturally she's going to end up homeless, but it's not rocket science. There's a frustration that actually those dots still haven't been joined. You'd think that they would've caught up by now. 

I mean, people have been talking about this, women have been talking about this for a really, really long time, and with the closure of countless refuges,  you know, of course this is likely to happen. So yeah, sorry, it's pretty disgusting, really. 

Zara: Yeah, and also what I've found in my own experience is that the impact of the refuges being overstretched and having to close is huge, because I actually approached refuge before I approached this council, and I was refused the refuge because I wasn't living with my perpetrator, and they had to prioritise because they only had a certain number of spaces. And that's actually been used against me in my case to say that I'm not high need, high risk, because the refuge refused me.

And so there's this onus on the refuges to pick up the pieces, when actually it's the council's duty to look after anyone who approaches as homeless. They can't, they shouldn't just be able to say, “oh, you know, well, it's domestic violence, so they'll deal with that, there's refuge for that,” when in actuality there isn't.

Sadia: So it sounds like there's a huge chasm, in between, that women are just falling through. So you either have to be super, super high risk, living with a perpetrator, to get that refuge space, or the other alternative is that you stick with your perpetrator, otherwise you're not going to get housed anywhere by the council.

And you just get bounced, you know, you get kind of batted between services, and nobody's willing to provide that service. And the problem also here is, that it sounds like they're not trying to catch things early enough. If they just helped women when they needed the help, they wouldn't present as high risk.

And because sadly, this moronic government only understands things in terms of cost, will it cost us a lot more, to deal with high risk emergency cases, than it does if we deal with things much, much earlier and provide, you know, early support and kind of take more of a preventative approach and an early intervention approach. Yeah. 

So there's a huge frustration on the part of everyone really, even the domestic abuse service in my county in Gloucester, they will only deal with – and this is the service itself, this isn't even a refuge – they will only deal with, like, medium- to high-risk cases. So if you’re a low-risk domestic abuse case, they won't even work with you anymore. They've been, you know, cutting back services so much. And that's not good enough really. 

Zara: Yeah. They don't actually have very much funding here at all. They have got a domestic violence service, who are amazing, they're called Rise. They get their funding directly from the council as far as I'm aware, but they are so overstretched that I don't actually have access to an IDVA. So I couldn't have an IDVA come with me as representation into the meetings or anything like that. So, again, we just don't have any representation and that just makes things so much worse because then council see that as, “oh, well you know, this isn't an important matter,” because we are not visible. Essentially, we're not being seen or heard. 

I am campaigning at the moment for domestic violence and trafficking survivors who are presenting as homeless. So I'm doing a local campaign,  predominantly here in Brighton, but I'm also in support of a national campaign that's happening at the moment,  headed by the APPG Homelessness Group in Parliament, and the purpose of the national campaign is to change the domestic abuse bill to include legislation that makes survivors who present as homeless automatic priority need status. 

Because currently, the way that legislation is at the moment, we are subjected to a number of tests that actually undermine that priority need status. So even if you have children, you can be subjected to the intentional homelessness tests, which is what I'm currently going through. Or if you are a single applicant, you are subject to a vulnerability test. And both of these tests completely undermine any priority need status, just by way of design.

Sadia: So these tests, the women that are leaving domestic abuse situations, they're claiming that they've intentionally made themselves homeless, is that right?

Zara: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what's happened to me and has happened to so, so many women, nationally and in Brighton and Hove. Brighton and Hove actually have, as far as I'm aware, a blanket policy approach that they apply to women who present with homelessness as a result of abuse, and just waiting on a Freedom of Information request to come back to verify the statistics.

But yeah, this is what's going on all over. 

Sadia: So, sorry, could you explain what that blanket response is? 

Zara: So I'll explain the homelessness application process first, if that's okay. 

Sadia: Sure.

Zara: To give a wider perspective. So when anyone presents as homeless, they go through a series of stages, testing stages, to verify what level of help they're entitled to, and whether the full duty of housing is going to be given to them by the council that they apply with. 

So the first stage is whether they're homeless or at risk of homelessness. The second stage is whether they're eligible for help, which basically comes down to if they've got British citizenship and recourse to public funds.

Sadia: Right.

Zara: And after that, it is whether or not they’re priority need, which determines the full duty to house i.e. going on the housing list and, you know, referring them to perhaps a private landlord in the interim. But as I said, these other two tests, the Vulnerability and the Intentional Homelessness Test, overlaps the priority need stage, for cases specifically with domestic violence,  and trafficking, and also with mental health issues as well. 

That's one of the other aspects of it, that it's just, it's completely open to interpretation with these tests, it's completely up to the council's discretion,  what they constitute as vulnerable. For example, final stage of the tests that you have to go through when you present as homeless, the final stage is priority need, and with that would come the full duty to house if you are accepted as priority need. But because there is an overlap, with the Vulnerability and the Intentional Homelessness Test,  with priority need, if that makes sense, so it's kind of like… for example, they will say under legislation that domestic violence is priority need. But then you are being put in a position where you have to prove ridiculous, you know, never ending evidence is required to prove that there is current, present domestic violence and that there is a current present risk. And that's completely up to the council's discretion. Because at the moment we only have a code of guidance in relation to domestic violence or trafficking, which again is, you know, it is just guidelines.

So they can turn around and say, “well, we don't want to follow that, because it's not legislation.” 

Sadia: Yeah. And the problem is also, in a lot of councils, I mean, housing teams are just, they're not trained in domestic abuse or trafficking or, you know, understanding vulnerability. They might have their generic safeguarding training once a year, but you know that it's just a day off for them.

They're going, they're fucking around, they're not actually taking anything in. And you know, I’ve heard staff say things like that before, you know? “Well, it's a day out of the office,” for them. So if they're leaving it to the discretion of, you know, individual assessors or staff that don't really have an understanding of how this works, then actually they are going to turn women down, and they're going to turn women away, and they're going to turn vulnerable people away. Because they lack the capacity to kind of make those informed decisions. So what are you doing about this right now? 

Zara: So currently what I'm doing on a local level, I'm engaging with the housing committee. I've had a lot of help from Councillor Gillian Williams,  who has put in a motion locally to the council to change their housing policy, which at the moment is just really hostile towards survivors. So she's been amazing. And then also Councillors John Allcock and Nichy Brennan are in support of the campaign. 

And nationally, I have engaged my local MP, who's Peter Kyle, who's joined the APPG Homelessness campaign that's headed by Neil Coyle. Caroline Lucas is also in support, and Women's Equality Party as well, backing it locally and nationally. So there's a lot of progress. 

I've had so much support from the community. It's amazing, you know, how helpful people have been here and how receptive they've been, which is the complete opposite of…

Sadia: Well, this comes back to, I think people think that we've dealt with sexism; actually, we're dealing with institutional sexism. You know, in terms of,  substance misuse services, there's a lot more money and resources pumped into substance misuse, offender rehabilitation, which is a very, very male heavy service. However, domestic abuse services get, like, you know, a fraction of the funding that the offender management or substance misuse services do.

So that to me just looks like institutional sexism. Why aren't women's services getting the funds that they really, really desperately need? Year on year domestic abuse and sexual violence and violence against women has just been on the rise. So we need the funds to have better services. And I realise that women's services are working, you know, so hard with the pittance that they get, but they're fighting a losing battle, effectively. They're constantly firefighting when actually what we should be doing is, ensuring that they have the resources and the funds that they need to ensure that fire is never even lit.

Zara: No, I'm just in agreement. 

Sadia: You've got some really tough things that we need to talk about. And one doesn't always know how many people know about these things, so we're actually really, really grateful for you, for coming on and sharing everything. Zara, thank you for coming on. 

Zara: Thank you so much for having me on.