Women's Homelessness and Child Poverty in Aotearoa: The Critical Connection
When the government released its annual child poverty report last week, showing a concerning 13.4 percent of children living in material hardship — a 0.9 percent increase from last year and a troubling 2.9 percent rise since 2022— the conversation focused on some of the more predictable things: the cost of living crisis; modest improvements in school attendance; and a call for targeted investment.
All of these things are important aspects of the conversation, and at the Coalition, we agree strongly with the need for targeted investment.
What was missing from the conversation, however, was any meaningful recognition of a critical factor driving child poverty in New Zealand: the gendered nature of housing insecurity and homelessness.
Many women experiencing homelessness have three or more children
Our research report, Ngā Ara ki te Kāinga: Understanding Barriers and Solutions to Women’s Homelessness in Aotearoa New Zealand, published in December 2024, revealed that women account for approximately half of New Zealand's homeless population, or 57000 women. Yet our housing policies and interventions remain stubbornly gender-blind, designed primarily around contracting models, not the gendered (and cultural) realities of people’s lives.
One area where this approach shows up most, and with the most negative intergenerational impact, is in relation to single Mums. While the current government highlights its prioritisation of placing women and children in permanent housing, there is no dedicated strategy, policy, or funding to build homes and deliver support services for single Mums. It is all ad-hoc.
This disconnect has profound implications for tamariki/children, considering that Census data confirms that women are more likely to be primary caregivers and that housing instability is a direct pathway to the material hardship figures highlighted in the government's report.
The latest child poverty statistics show increased avoidable hospitalizations, declining immunization rates for babies, and growing food insecurity. These are not isolated social problems but symptoms of a housing crisis that disproportionately affects women, particularly single mothers.
As one frontline worker explained in Ngā Ara ki te Kāinga:
"Land agents and landlords have their pick of the crop... They're not going to pick a struggling young family over a very well-off single man who's got no children."
The one-size-fits all approach falls short for women and children
What's particularly striking is how the child poverty report and the Coalition's research on women's homelessness reveal parallel system failures. Both show siloed government responses that fail to connect related issues. Both demonstrate how a lack of gender-disaggregated data obscures the true nature of the problem. And both highlight how generic, one-size-fits-all approaches inevitably fall short.
Benefits are a gendered condition holding women in poverty
The child poverty report shows that more young people are now living in families receiving benefits. This statistic directly intersects with the Coalition's finding that more women experienced housing deprivation between Census 2018 and Census 2022 and that 20 percent of ‘housing-deprived women’are receiving the the sole parent benefit versus 5 percent of those in the rest of the population.
Graph showing the different rate of benefit receipt among women in 2018. Source: Taylor Fry
They also face significant mobility limitations - with only 26 percent of housing-deprived women holding driver's licenses compared to 37.3 percent of housing-deprived men. Without reliable transportation, accessing employment, healthcare, and social services becomes nearly impossible, contributing to a cycle of material hardship that affects both mothers and their children.
What would a truly integrated approach to addressing child poverty and women's homelessness look like?
Ngā Ara ki te Kāinga shows that women require distinct policy responses that acknowledge:
The spectrum of housing needs across different demographics of women
Safety as a primary concern, particularly for those fleeing violence
The complex challenges of maintaining custody while experiencing housing instability
The compounding effects of gender, ethnicity, age, and disability
To be truly transformative, we call on the government to implement gender-responsive policy frameworks across all housing and welfare programs, with mandatory gender impact assessments for every initiative.
We call on the government to develop a Women's Homelessness Strategy with specific targets for increasing women-only accommodation options and safety-focused design standards.
We call on the government to improve cross-sector coordination between housing, mental health, domestic violence, and child welfare services, creating integrated funding streams that follow women and their children across systems.
We call on the government to prioritise prevention by targeting resources toward high-risk transitions like relationship breakdowns or exits from state care - moments when women and children are most vulnerable to housing instability.
Finally, we call on the government to establish robust monitoring systems with specific metrics for women's homelessness and its impact on child wellbeing.
A project of national significance
Chief Children's Commissioner Dr. Claire Achmad has called for making child poverty "an ongoing project of national significance." We agree. And this goal cannot be achieved without explicitly addressing women's homelessness.
The 13.4 percent of children living in material hardship often have mothers who are navigating a housing system that wasn't designed with them in mind. When we fail to provide safe, appropriate housing options for women, especially mothers, we directly contribute to the material hardship statistics that make headlines each year.
We’re working to change that.
