Common ground, complementary approaches: adapting the Housing First model for domestic violence survivors

ABSTRACT

The Housing First model has been shown to be a highly effective approach to achieving permanent housing for chronically homeless individuals with serious mental illness and chemical dependency. There are numerous components of the model that lend themselves toward achieving similar goals for homeless domestic violence (DV) survivors and their children. A leading cause of homelessness for women, many of whom are mothers, is DV. This article describes the commonalities between the Housing First model and the tenets of DV victim advocacy work and explores how Housing First can be adapted to effectively achieve safe and stable housing for DV survivors and their children. Preliminary evidence for the adapted model – termed Domestic Violence Housing First – is provided, and policy implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Intimate partner violence
• domestic violence
• homeless
• housing first

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While the Housing First model does not explicitly include attending to trauma or systems change (Tsemberis, 2010, p. 18), both are often implied or alluded to, and many programs operating from the model include one or both in their practice.

2. These common tenets have been drawn from multiple sources, including Davies and Lyon (2014), Goodman and Epstein (2008), and Sullivan (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, awarded to the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence [grant number OPP1117416].

Notes on contributors

Cris M. Sullivan

Cris M. Sullivan is a professor of ecological-community psychology and director of the Research Consortium on Gender-Based Violence at Michigan State University (MSU). In addition to her MSU appointments, she is the senior research advisor to the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. She has been an advocate and researcher in the movement to end gender-based violence since 1982. Her areas of expertise include developing and rigorously evaluating community interventions for abused women and their children and evaluating victim services.

Linda Olsen

Linda Olsen is the Housing Program Coordinator at the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Linda has worked in the field of domestic violence for 30 years, serving in the roles of shelter director and executive director at two domestic violence agencies. She has graduate degrees in theology and social work.