Pathways of Hope is a three-year research partnership, delivered with Imkaan members, looking into the systemic barriers faced by Black and minoritised women when accessing specialist ‘by and for’ housing-related support. It aims to drive reform across housing and VAWG systems. 

In our joint response to the Government’s National Plan to End Homelessness, we welcome the Strategy’s focus on prevention and its recognition that domestic abuse is a significant driver of homelessness. 

However, recognition must be matched by action. 

• For Black and minoritised victim-survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG), homelessness is not only a housing issue. It is also a racial justice issue, an immigration justice issue and a systems accountability issue. 

• The response highlights the urgent need for the Government to ensure that its homelessness commitments are implemented through an explicitly anti-racist, survivor-centred approach. This includes ring-fenced funding for specialist ‘by and for’ Black and minoritised VAWG services, safe and secure housing regardless of immigration status, and stronger accountability mechanisms to end gatekeeping, unsafe accommodation and inconsistent local authority practice. 

• The response also raises significant concerns about the impact of No Recourse to Public Funds, the ongoing use of unsuitable temporary accommodation, the risks of pooled funding models, and the need for housing to be recognised as a core pillar of the VAWG response. 

Without addressing these structural and systemic gaps, the Homelessness Strategy risks reproducing the very inequalities it seeks to resolve, leaving Black and minoritised women and migrant survivors locked out of safety and forced into cycles of abuse and homelessness. 

Read Pathways of Hope’s full response > here<

For more information, please contact Imkaan’s Policy & Research Manager Rani, at rani@imkaan.org.uk.