Sexual violence rampant amid lack of housing options for homeless Vancouver women: survey
A Vancouver non-profit for ending violence against women says a recent survey it conducted confirms the level of sexual abuse unhoused women face and raises questions about how effective current outreach work is.
Not all of the women were actually living in the tents there full-time, though. Of the 50 women included in the final results, 53.6 per cent said they were sleeping in a tent, while another 33.8 per cent said they were sleeping on the sidewalk or in an alley and 12.6 per cent said they were staying in a single room occupancy unit.Most had been struggling with housing for even longer, though.
Abbott says she wonders whether the fact that most outreach teams work during the day from Monday to Friday means they are missing a significant portion of unhoused women. The non-profit plans to explore the reasons behind that gap and how outreach workers can change their approach in a second survey.A 2022-23 survey by Atira Women’s Resource Society of 50 homeless women living in Vancouver shows the majority said they’ve never been meaningfully connected to an outreach team or offered housing.
“If you have to get up in the middle of the night and go use a bathroom, it’s a risky proposition for a woman.” She says the issues are difficult to address. Increasing staff could help, but residents also report feeling unsafe when they believe their every move is being monitored.Reducing the size of shelters and SROs and increasing the number of them would be beneficial, Abbott says, but very expensive.
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