For decades, domestic and family violence policy has been built on a simple assumption: when someone decides to leave violence, the system can help them find somewhere safe to go.

That assumption is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Across Australia, escalating rents, chronic shortages of social and affordable housing, insecure tenancy arrangements and rising cost-of-living pressures are fundamentally changing what safety looks like. For many victim-survivors, leaving is no longer determined solely by risk. It is constrained by whether safe housing exists at all.

This panel brings together leaders from the domestic and family violence, housing and homelessness sectors to explore how Australia's housing crisis is reshaping the experience of violence and challenging the effectiveness of existing responses. Rather than examining housing as an issue of recovery alone, the discussion will consider housing as a structural determinant of safety and a critical component of violence prevention.

Through a facilitated conversation, panellists will reflect on how housing insecurity strengthens coercive control, prolongs exposure to violence, increases the complexity of risk assessment and places unprecedented pressure on specialist services. The discussion will examine how perpetrators exploit financial insecurity and the absence of viable housing options, how children remain exposed to violence for longer, and how frontline services are increasingly forced to manage structural failures beyond their traditional remit.

Importantly, the panel will move beyond describing the problem to consider what a genuinely integrated response could look like. It will explore the policy, investment and cross-sector reforms needed to position housing not as an adjunct to domestic and family violence responses, but as an essential element of prevention, safety and long-term recovery.

Drawing on the expertise of Annabelle Daniel, Regina Bennett and Geraldine Bilston, the session will encourage delegates to rethink the relationship between housing and violence. Rather than asking how services can respond more effectively once violence has occurred, the discussion will ask what becomes possible when safe, secure housing is recognised as a cornerstone of preventing violence, supporting recovery and enabling lasting safety.

Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of the intersection between housing and domestic and family violence, an appreciation of the structural conditions that shape victim-survivors' choices, and practical insights into how governments, housing

providers and specialist services can work together to create systems that make safety achievable rather than aspirational.

Annabelle Daniel OAM, inaugural CEO of Women’s Community Shelters, has worked with local communities around NSW to establish, open and support the 11 crisis shelters in the Women’s Community Shelters network. She has also established WCS as a Community Housing Provider which offers social and affordable housing, transitional housing, and multiple large-scale meanwhile-use homes for women aged 55+ experiencing homelessness.

She continues her efforts to create more crisis shelters and preventative programs addressing domestic violence and women's homelessness in New South Wales and is now expanding the network into Victoria.

Annabelle's volunteer roles include Chair of Domestic Violence NSW (the peak body for domestic and family violence services in NSW); the Independent Member on the New South Wales Coercive Control Implementation Taskforce (leading the Domestic and Family Violence Sector and Lived Expertise Reference Groups) and member of the Primary Prevention Taskforce established by the Minister for Prevention Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

She has been a leader in women’s homelessness and DFV for several decades – also working on the front line as a Shelter Manager, and with the Federal Government as a Senior Departmental Leader within Services Australia, overseeing the Child Support Program, and as a Senior Investigator with the Commonwealth Ombudsman.