Divorcing equality

Let's say a newspaper writes a beat up story about a flat advert about a household asking for heterosexual people not to apply.  The article subtly ridicules all the ways the flatmates self-described themselves through the liberal use of quote marks:

It was for a four-bedroom house in the suburb of Newtown, which the existing flatmates described as a "queer, transgender, vegetarian household".
They described themselves as two "feminist/politically switched on adults"......

The Human Rights Commission gets the chance to respond.  It's not unreasonable to expect they might raise the persistent discrimination sexuality and gender diverse people experience in housing.  Like the facts around how vulnerable our young people are, when families reject our sexual or gender identity, and we have to find housing before we're actually ready to be independent.  Or the complete lack of safety for anyone who isn't a cis man in our homeless shelters - we have too few options for homeless women, queer or not, and no options for people who don't fit gender norms/are non-binary. 

Or what happens to us when we rock up to apply for a flat, and the person renting it realises we are not straight, or we are trans, and suddenly the room or house isn't available anymore.  Add being Maori or from any visible ethnic minority to that and you've got an even smaller pool to choose from.

Or what about when we find a flat, and it's ok, they even know we're queer - but then we get a similar gender lover, and suddenly people don't actually talk to us properly anymore? 

These are all overtish - rarely will we be told any of this is about being queer or trans or brown - but we know.  There's also all the covert stuff when you live with homophobic, biphobic or transphobic people.  The inability to have ordinary conversations about your experiences, because those people don't want to hear or don't understand or when you try talking, they are glazed over, bored, because it's not their experience and they don't really care.  The failure to acknowledge significant pain points, like the way your family treat you at Christmas or the hoops you have to jump through to get the hormones or medication you need to be recognised as who you are.

See, I EXPECT our Human Rights Commission to have heard those stories, because they monitor discrimination in this country.  They held a Transgender Inquiry in 2008 which said about housing:

"The Inquiry heard that finding a home was not always easy for trans people.  Those who transitioned as young adults were usually dependent on shared rental accomodation, particularly in flatting situations.  Social marginalisation and negative attitudes towards transpeople affects access to shared accomodation.  A trans woman told of being offered a room in a flat but was later turned away when the other tenants realised she was trans.  One trans man described the stress of boarding in a large house where flatmates continually harassed him by referring to him as "she"."

But instead the Human Rights Commission gave a weak waffling response about how we didn't want to live in a country with prejudice, whether that was saying "No straight people" or "No gay people".

The fact the HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION doesn't understand structural discrimination is terrifying.  Because guess what - straight people can live everywhere else in the whole world almost - the fact that a couple of queer trans peeps in the lovely suburb of Newtown want to feel safe at home doesn't restrict straight people's housing options.

It kind of gets worse, with once again, our more mainstream Rainbow community organisations not knowing how to deal with talking about marginalisation, safety and discrimination.  There is no story here apart from the fact that queer and trans people must have the right, in an incredibly discriminatory housing context in Aotearoa New Zealand, to develop homes which feel safe for us.  And the Human Rights Commission and every single Rainbow organisation commenting on this should be saying that.

Because home is where we go to recover from the world.  It's where we most need to feel safe, to feel seen, to know how we are is just fine.  It's where, if we're talking psychologically, we need to be able to sleep without fear and rest from how we are treated on the streets, at work, in study, whenever we try to access anything we need.  All of those experiences can be more difficult for trans and queer people.

Marriage equality has dulled our senses, drugged our supposed protections, shifted the focus from most queer and trans people's experiences - particularly those of us who are poor, not white, disabled and/or less able or have less desire to fit in.  Expect no less than rage from those of us who never wanted to get married in the first place - it's time for the Rainbow community to divorce this unhealthy relationship with "equality" and start dating around.

Disability and Queer Issues Part 1

The following is an edited version of a short talk I gave on disability and queer issues to a queer, mostly studenty, audience. It is limited by the short time I had to speak, as well as my own perspective. At the end I touched on some aspects of movement building and common experiences, however I have ended this post quite abruptly before that as I'd like to explore these in more depth in a later post.

As a queer disabled person, the disadvantages and exclusion you face end up being multiplied. It’s hard to find queer friendly housing, and it’s hard to find accessible - which may mean quiet or dry or wheelchair accessible - housing. If you need both, you get slammed. Queer friendly healthcare isn’t that easily come by - but try finding queer friendly healthcare that is accessible and includes the specialist knowledge you might need. Queer people generally get useless, inappropriate and often outright damaging sex education. Disabled people can get the same, or often don’t get it at all, perhaps because we are assumed to be non-sexual, because we are removed from those classes for extra tuition, because it is not offered in a way we can understand or interpret or because it is not appropriate to our bodies. Again, the effect is multiplied.

Queer spaces are too often inaccessible - even on the most basic level of being wheelchair accessible. It's not acceptable, and constitutes a 'not welcome' sign on the door for many disabled people. And whilst this isn't okay anywhere, I think most of us here know how essential queer spaces can be, and that they're often the place you go after being excluded from anywhere else. Accessibility needs can be quite varied, though - to give one personal example, I struggle with the reliance on bars and clubs as queer spaces because I have problems in noisy environments. I'm happy that more and more alternatives are being offered, but there's a long way to go. Accessibility is often overlooked in event planning, but it needs to become as routine as booking a room or putting up posters.

 
The next thing I want to talk about is family and relationships. The picture above is from the movie Milk in which this young person calls up Harvey Milk for help as his parents are about to send him off to be degayed. He’s advised to run away, and get to a big city. The image then zooms out, revealing he’s a wheelchair user. That story had a happy ending, but many don’t.

It’s hard enough escaping from abusive or bigoted family - but if you have limited mobility, if sleeping on a couch isn’t possible for you, if you need personal care provided by your parents, if they’re the ones who take you to medical appointments, if public transport is inaccessible and your escape can be attributed to your disability then it’s a whole other story. You’ve probably heard about parents of disabled adults fighting to be paid for carework in the news recently. Mostly it’s been fought from the angle of these parents’ rights - which is important. But it’s also important that disabled people are not forced to live with family members longer than they would otherwise choose for financial reasons.

Similarly, there can be pressure for disabled people to stay in relationships longer than they otherwise would if they are meeting support needs - this includes abusive relationships, but also those which have simply run their course. I think this issue is particularly important to the queer community, not just because abuse in queer relationships is under recognised, but because we place a lot of value on the fight to be accepted as in relationships, and we need to understand that for some leaving can be just as much as a struggle.

The sexuality and gender identity of disabled people can be linked to their disabled status in a way which pathologises or dismisses that identity. For example, asexual disabled people are assumed to be examples of the belief that ‘disabled people don’t have sex’ rather than having their identity acknowledged in its own right. Disabled lesbians are assumed to be lesbian because they can’t get a man. Genderqueer disabled people can be assumed to be confused or lack understanding of social appropriateness.

That said, I think queer people can often be unaware of the complex ways sexuality and gender identiy can be linked to disability for some people. To give just one specific example, a lot of autistic people see themselves as outside the gender binary. And a number of them would never identify as genderqueer or join groups catering for queer and gender diverse people (though of course some do!). They might see their gender identity as an extension of their autistic identity, but not talk in the terms or feel welcome in the spaces that other non-binary people do.

Disabled queer people of course experience similar issues to many who experience more than one form of oppression. The more acceptable norms a person fits, the more easily they can get away with breaking others. Sometimes this starts externally, and becomes internal, with people trying to hide one part of themselves because it is all ‘too much’.

Okay, shoe time:

Say (to make it simple) if you were at a queer women’s group, and a woman walked in wearing one of these pairs of shoes. You’d probably assume it related to her identity in some way. If I gave you two stereotype hairstyles, I’m sure you could match them with the shoes - and you might make some assumptions about the type of person she is and what she does with her time.

 I look at those shoes and see one pair I could never ever conceive of wearing anything like them, because I’d fall over, and another that I might manage but would be a struggle. I don’t see identity; I see functionality. But so much of identity in the queer community is assumed to be tied up with what we wear or how we look which excludes those of us who have limited choices in this matter.

Related to this is the label of ‘assimilationist’. To me, an assimilationist position is one in which someone seeks to advance the position of their own group whilst leaving the system intact, someone who (for example) focuses on fighting for rich white gay men to have the same rights as rich white straight men, and thinks that’s as far as it needs to go. But I’ve seen it directed at individuals for focussing on meeting personal needs or living a conventional lifestyle.

The truth is, we all do what we need to survive in this society - but the needs of some disabled people may not be recognised as needs. Having - say - a quiet living space or a car because you need it (or even if you don’t need it) isn’t a problem - assuming that because you have the world isn’t broken is. Disabled queer people can also find themselves in a complicated position when it comes to breaking or conforming to stereotypes. The same action can be viewed as challenging stereotypes in one community, but upholding them in others. And therefore we really need to stop making this about our lifestyles, about how we live and what we own, because those don’t change anything. But what we fight for - and how we fight it, collectively - does.

Language and concepts associated with disability - intellectual disability and mental illness in particular - are often used to oppress queer people. Two particular examples come to mind; some of you may remember Constance McMillen, a young person in Mississippi who was not allowed to take her same sex partner to her school prom. After public pressure, the school seemingly relented, only trick to her into what was dubbed a ‘fake’ prom with her intellectually disabled classmates, whilst the so called ‘real’ prom went on elsewhere. Meanwhile in New Zealand a woman recently received an apology for years of medical abuse - including electro-convulsive therapy - resulting from her sexual orientation.

And I think it’s so important we’re careful how we respond to these. Our response shouldn’t be “this abuse was so bad because she wasn’t really mentally ill” or “it was wrong to segregate her from the rest of her school because she’s not intellectually disabled” but to acknowledge that people are on the receiving end of similar forms of oppression for ostensibly different reasons and we need to fight it together.

Vaccinations and Beneficiary Bashing

And now the government is considering penalising beneficiaries who don't immunise their children.

Just as I believe access to free contraception is a good thing, I think vaccination is a good thing. I believe parents should adhere to the regular vaccinations schedules, except in rare and specific cases.

This has nothing to do with vaccinations.

If the goal was to make sure all children were vaccinated, as well as making it easier for parents and dispelling some of the myths, the government could consider a policy like that in some regions of the US where children are unable to attend school if unvaccinated. I have significant concerns about such a policy. But what it would do is (a) put pressure on parents (all parents) to have their children vaccinated, and for those who didn't limit the potential for communication of diseases to other students. That would be the more sensible policy for a government concerned about vaccination rates.

This has nothing to do with vaccinations.

But it is quite clever. On the one hand, it's the usual beneficiary bashing, introduction of nasty punitive measures, and the implied slur that beneficiaries are irresponsible, illogical people who don't care about the health of their children (just like they're apparently all sluts who are popping out one child after another to play the taxpayer, or something).

But I think there's something else going on. There's been an outbreak of whooping cough in my low-income suburb. Obviously lack of vaccination is a significant contributor, as is sheer chance, but it also thrives in crowded conditions. There's a reason it happens in places like this rather than wealthy suburbs, and it ain't because parents are stupid.

Rheumatic fever - for which there is no vaccination - affects young Maori people at vastly disproportionate rates. Preventative measures, however, are well known and documented, including less overcrowding and better quality housing. And that's not even touching asthma rates and severity, depression and repeated contraction of minor illnesses.

But rather than tackling these, the focus seems to be not just on the beneficiary bashing, but on the framing of health issues amongst beneficiaries as issues of personal irresponsibility and ignorance, rather than a public health issue which needs to be tackled on a structural level. And facilitates both the bashing and the sticking-one's-head-in-the-sand.

So yes, parents, it's generally a good idea to vaccinate your children. But to the government, what would be a good idea for you to do is to stop screwing people over, quit the beneficiary bashing and start tackling the fact that (poor, Maori and Pacific Island in particular) families are living in shitty, cold, uninsulated, overcrowded housing, and it's doing no-one's health any good.

This is how it works

How to reduce the cost of state services without doing anything about reducing the actual demand

1.  Announce that support that used to be available through home visits will now only be accessible at an office.  But don't worry because there will be offices here, there and everywhere and of course you will be able to get to one!

2.  Wait decent period.  During this time there will be an initial problem whereby lots of people find the new system unworkable. Some of this may end up in the media. Stay firm, see this out, you are nearly there, this too shall pass.   These are but teething troubles and if you don't make any significant changes then they will sort themselves out.  Put your serious face on though and say "we must do better" when asked about it by anyone other than your closest friends and advisors.  Be very careful not to laugh, smile or rub your hands together gleefully while you mutter joyously about savings.

3.  Voila, the pesky people who reckoned they couldn't access the service anymore have gone away and stopped being a bother!  Less cost:  WIN!  Ignore anyone who points out that those people still need the support they just can't access it.  Dazzle them with numbers; savings, number of happy smiley people, number of times the door counter clicked over, that kind of thing. 

4.  Announce that due to the reduced number accessing the support (look, see, numbers!) it's not really necessary to have all those offices here, there and everywhere anymore.  And if we rationalise (ooooh, good word, it sounds so rational!) then we can have bigger better ONE STOP SHOP offices in hub locations that are really good for public transport links and have good coffee machines. 

5.  Wait decent period.  During this time there may be some annoyed people who can't get to the new office, but if they really needed the support they would find a way.  Stay firm, see this out, you are nearly there, this too shall pass, etc etc, blah blah blah see 2 above.

6.  Voila, shed some more of those pesky people who reckoned they needed the support, when clearly they didn't or they would have made more of an effort.  We even offered them a nice coffee and a taxi fare to get home again, I really don't see what else we could have done, isn't it sad that some people can't help us to help them.  Less cost:  DOUBLE WIN!  Any doubters can be waved aside with declarations of Because Numbers! and Wonderful Downward Trend and look how happy that person over there with the free cup of coffee is.

7.  Announce that due to the reduced number accessing the support (look, see, numbers!) it's not really necessary to even have offices anymore, we can do it all over the phone and really most people use the internet nowadays anyway, and we'll make it a free call so you can conduct your private support queries in a phone box, and this way we don't have to fund any wasteful free coffees and taxi fares anymore.  You won't even have to leave the house to get the support you need! 

8.  Wait decent period.  During this time the phone system will inevitably crash, most likely more than once, and of course this will be exactly what those naysayers and boxed in thinkers who objected to this (luddites! technophobes! get into the 21st century, everyone does everything by phone these days sweeties!) said would happen.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and what really matters is how you handle a crisis, not whether or not you could have totally avoided it in the first place.  Stay firm, see this out, you are nearly there, etc etc, blah blah blah see 2 above.

9.  Magnifique!  Even less people accessneed the surface!  This is great!  Oh the efficiencies, the wonderful efficiencies.  And isn't it nice to know that those accessing the service now must really really need it, and I told you there was some fat to be cut and we found it and oh yes did I cut it, and now I don't have to trip over any annoying homeless people when I've finished visiting one of the offices, what a relief.

10.  Take a holiday, you deserve it.

Guest Post: The R-Word

Thanks to hazel for allowing to crosspost this from The Money Pit where she blogs about home renovation and her life.


Field and I are in a relationship.

We don’t have sex.

It’s a relationship where we split the bills and squabble over what kind of cheese to buy; where I get away with picking the bacon I want, and she has all the salt-and-vinegar chips her little heart desires; where we have long sprawling conversations at eleven o’clock at night about Books We’ve Read and Why Television Is Hard; where we email each other from our respective workplaces about what we want to eat for dinner, what we’ve read on the internet news that day, why four hours sleep is not enough, whether it’s a good idea to buy more wine (yes). But at the end of the day, we go to our separate beds in our separate rooms and close the doors.

And it’s invisible.

*

A few nights ago we had a conversation about how we want to refer to each other: we flatted with each other (and with Nish) for six years, but this is something new. We’re hiring plumbers now. In the end we decided that “co-owner” fit the best, but that’s not quite right either: too much business in the front, not enough party at the back. “Partners” has connotations that I in no way disapprove of, but which just aren’t accurate; it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if people thought that Field and I were a couple, but we’re not. I toyed with “lady-wife”, mostly as a joke, but while that kind of shit is fun with friends it’s difficult to say with a straight face to your lawyer, your electrician, your bank-manager, your mum.

So co-owners it is for now, and we’ll change it if it stops being the closest match for what we are.

*

But we’re invisible, this thing. When I talk about buying a house with Field, I’m talking about my long-term life plan. I’m talking about planning a garden, about where we’re planting the fuschia (me) and the hebes (me) and the carpet roses (Field) and the agapanthus (over my dead body). I’m talking about the six-month conversation we’ll have about whether we’re going to wallpaper or paint the lounge, and what shade it should be, and what the curtains should be made of. I’m talking about how we run the kitchen, how we cook together, how we make plans to go to the supermarket and what our budget there will be. I’m in charge – always and forever – of making electronics Go; she’s in charge of the alphabet because my god how I hate reshelving books.

I’m talking about the two or three years of planning that went into this. I’m talking about how I researched suburbs and public transport routes; about how grateful I am that Field got her full licence and a car, and how much easier that made the house-hunting process. I’m talking about the gin-and-tonics she made us tonight for dinner, before she went to lie down on her bed in the summer evening sun and I came online to watch comedy routines on youtube and write this post. I’m talking about the expression of my hopes and dreams, my plans and schemes, how I’ve wanted to do up a house for forever (as long as Nish has known me, and that’s a bloody long time).

I’m talking about how we started having conversations about how we wanted this to work 18 months ago, how we set up a joint savings account over a year ago, how we now have 2 joint accounts plus the mortgage, insurance in both our names and shared household goods. I know where she was born, her date of birth, what her passport photograph looked like when she was thirteen. I chat to her mum sometimes on the phone a bit. She knows these things about me.
And so I have conversations with people about buying a house with Field, and what they hear is of two good friends buying a house together, and what they say is:

That’s sensible.

and

Have you thought about what would happen if you didn’t want to live together anymore?

*

And.

No. No, it isn’t sensible, you utter moron, do you know how much it would devastate me if it all turned to pot, how difficult it would be to disentangle our lives? Our finances are complicated and not wholly governed by standard law, but that’s the least of it when we have mostly shared friends and I can’t remember exactly how to cook dinner on my own anymore, when the kitchen seems strange when she’s not there to navigate around and pass me spoons and pepper.

and

Yes, what, you think we set up a joint savings account and talked to banks and lawyers and looked at houses and put in an offer and went unconditional and settled and moved without ever thinking about what we were doing? Without ever talking to each other about it?

*

This wasn’t an accident, this house in this street. It wasn’t the easy or the simple choice; it wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t a calculated financial decision. My life isn’t good financial planning – single girls without options, women on the shelf looking to get on the property ladder. I may be a spinster with a cat, but by god I have done it with intent.

On Big Decisions and Hysterical Ladybrains

Good friends of mine - I'll call them Hazel* and Catherine - are buying a house together. They're both women in their twenties; this is their first owned home and whilst they're not exactly poor, as the whole house buying thing would indicate, their incomes are sufficiently limited that they don't have a lot of choice.

Anyway, they have more or less completed a purchase; it's a doer upper, that will need significant work both inside and outside, and it's a commute out of the city, but it's both closer and more convenient to transport than most others in their price range, and it has the right number and configuration of rooms for their needs and whilst compromises have been made they're pretty happy about it. It's happened in a rush, and there is So Much To Do, but both of them seem excited, in amongst the terror.

But through the process, there have been Concerns. Doubts raised by people I shall amalgamate into the character of  'Concerned of Titahi Bay'**. Concerned of Titahi Bay thinks that the project they are taking on is too much work. Concerned of Titahi Bay thinks they should have bought in Kelburn or Petone or Mount Victoria or something (for those of you not familiar with Wellington, these are not remotely realistic places for them to buy a house on their budget). Concerned of Titahi Bay is very, very concerned that they are letting their hearts get in the way of their heads, that they are making emotional rather than rational decisions.

Hazel and Catherine are close friends, who have lived together a number of years. They are not in a sexual or romantic relationship, but this is not simply a matter of pooling resources for a few years in order to get on the property ladder before going their separate ways; they are a family and a household and intend to be so indefinitely.

Yup, you've guessed it. Concerned of Titahi Bay is very concerned. Have you thought, Concerned of Titahi Bay wants to know, of what's going to happen if you fall out! If one of you goes overseas! If one of you gets married! If you have different views on decisions about the property!

Yes, yes they have thought about that a lot. They've thought about what would happen if their lives took them in various directions. Or if they fell out. They're intelligent people, one of them has substantial legal knowledge. They've talked about this extensively, drawn up an agreement and each engaged a (separate) lawyer. These are sensible things to think about before making any major life decision, particularly one where your property is intertwined with that of someone else. It's sad - and infuriating - though, that had they been an engaged couple buying their first home, these issues may have come up but they likely wouldn't be at the forefront of people's minds.

They've also thought about the building work required. They've made provisional budgets and weighed the stress and time and money involved against the compromises - chiefly location - they would have to make if they bought another property within their budget. They've set a price range they can afford - not just in terms of the bank signing off, but someone that will reasonably fit into their day to day budget.

My partner and I bought a house about eighteen months ago. It's out of the city - significantly further out than Hazel and Catherine's new house. We don't have a car - aside from not being able to afford that and a house deposit at that time, I can't drive, primarily for disability reasons, and my partner chooses not to. I was shocked by the number of people who decide to tell me I was making a Very Bad Decision living where I do without a car. Leaving aside the limited amount of choice without making significant sacrifices in other areas, they were acting like I had never thought about this before. Like I didn't know that my life would be easier if I could drive. Like looking at transport options hadn't been top of our priority list. Like we hadn't been managing with public transport all our adult lives.

And then there's the whole emotional decision problem. Emotions are absolutely a valid part of any big life decision. They're not on the level of 'will attempting to meet the repayments be a recipe for bankruptcy', but if you're buying a house to live in, and you haven't thought about how you'll feel living in it, you're probably not going to end up that happy. It's not that advice isn't helpful. I've benefited a lot, when making Big Decisions (and I'm sure my friends have too) from people sharing stories, giving local or technical knowledge, or simply being a sounding board to talk things through with. But I wish people would do that with the assumption that the people they are talking to - even if they are women in their twenties! - are both intelligent people who are capable of thinking about the major issues and have priorities which may not be your own, but are no less legitimate for that.

I'll leave the last (edited) word to Hazel:

We've got the "you need to not make emotional decisions" thing from almost every guy we've talked to. Most of the women I've spoken to about house buying have (a) accepted that an emotional reaction to the place is totally okay and (b) assumed that we've, like, thought about that shit. I just really feel that if we were two dudes buying a fixer-upper in [suburb], the things we're getting told would be different and we wouldn't be being accused of having been MAKING STUPID DECISIONS BECAUSE OF OUR HYSTERICAL LADYBRAINS.

* I asked Hazel tonight what I should blog about and she ranted for a bit, and I said "so basically about you and your lifedrama". "Yes," she said. So here it is.

But they do such good work...

Today I'll just be the grumpy feminist, sitting over here in the corner complaining about charity at Christmastime. How many times have you heard this:

"Oh, I obviously don't like a lot of the things [Charity] stands for, but, you know, they do such good work..."

The idea of good work and of charity generally, is fraught with issues as well, but there's something more specific happening here. There's a division presented between the practical, on the ground, real charity stuff - soup kitchens, emergency accommodation, addiction treatment or whatever. That's concrete and real. The other stuff - homophobia, transphobia, ableism, misogyny etc - that's not nice, but it's purely theoretical and we really should be focused on the important things here. It's not like it makes any difference in practice...

...except it does. Even when charity provisions don't actively discriminate - and sometimes they do, with horrendous consequences - you can be sure that there will be a lot of people who don't feel safe using their services. The people who are discriminated against are both more likely to be in the groups that need services provided by charities, and likely to be in a more difficult situation than many others needing those services.

It's also not the case - as some people assume - that the choice is between having, say, a homeless shelter which isn't accessible to everyone, or no shelter at all. Such services are often partially government funded - the need for them is already recognised; it's simply a case of who the contract goes to. And I like to think that as a society we do see the need for solutions - or at least ambulances at bottoms of cliffs - to these issues, even if not as much or as soon as I'd like.

This isn't a division between real physically tangible things or some fluffy abstract principle. This is about whether kids who can no longer live safely at home get to sleep in appropriate accommodation or on the streets. It's about whether people are able to eat in an environment in which they feel safe, or have to weigh that up versus going hungry. It's about whether people abused by carers have a way out or whether the abuse of them is reinforced. It's about whether can access free counseling that is appropriate to them, or whether they get increasingly and more dangerously desperate. The identities of  the people who need them don't make that food or that roof any less concrete, any less needed.

You may or may not have the ability or inclination to donate money. You may feel that it is better going to places that aren't charities in the usual sense of the word (a reminder that CMP meatworkers are still locked out). But if you do chose to make a charitable donation, please make sure that it is to a group that is genuinely in line with your beliefs, and not pushing us two steps backward for every one they take forwards.

Wellington Women's Boarding House

Homelessness for women is more common than we think. At least, that’s if we think outside the “street homeless” box that might be where most of us first go. I screened homeless women for the largest supported housing provider in London for two years. We had 50 safe houses, and constantly had a waiting list. The women I interviewed were not living rough. They were coming out of prison, sleeping on floors, being offered a bed if they would have sex with the man whose house it was, staying in Refuges or crisis homeless accomodation. I didn’t meet one woman, in two years, who came out of a homeless or mental health hostel who had not been sexually assaulted by a male service user there.

The Homeworks Trust, an Auckland based charity specialising in issues around housing for women says homelessness is a significant social issue for women in Aotearoa. We know we have a home when:

•We have a space of our own that is considered to belong to us *

•It is secure: we know that “home” is going to be there when we get there

•We can come and go when we choose to and decide what we do in the space and how it will look

•It is safe

•We are free from physical, sexual and emotional abuse

These criteria are not met, too often, for women in Aotearoa, because on average we earn less than men; single-parent families are significantly poorer in Aotearoa, most of which are headed by women; and women and children are the disproportionately victimised through domestic and sexual violence. Add in racism impacting on housing choices, inadequate social housing, and non-existent choices for women with impairments, and the picture is even grimmer for some women.

Homeless women need housing services that take into account gender – the needs of women to heal after violence, the needs of women to be able to live free from violence. Generic homeless services, the vast majority of services in Aotearoa, are typically set up around the needs of homeless men.

Which is why the Wellington Women’s Boarding House is such a special place. It’s been constantly full, of women between the ages of 17 and 84, since being set up in 1992, prioritising short-term accomodation for those on low incomes.

If you’re interested in voluntary work around homelessness and women, the women who run the Boarding House, all volunteers apart from a live-in manager, would love to hear from you. They are keen to have women with diverse skills and backgrounds involved, in a wide range of capacities, so if the idea appeals, get in touch with Philippa at piphartsmith@gmail.com by 28 October.

*This isn’t the post for talking about home “ownership” as a plank of capitalism. Another day. I’m reading Homeworks Trust as meaning rented or owned accomodation by this phrase.

Housing report ignores research

There's an excellent article on the housing group report in this morning's Dom-Post by Prof. Phillippa Howden-Chapman, director of Otago Uni's housing and health research programme. She points out that we have only 6% of hosueholds in social housing here, compared with 18% in England. She also notes the conflict of interest when businessmen, developers and small religious housing charities predominated on the housing group. It also ignored the Otago research, which shows that moving into a state house lowers the rate of avoidable housing-related hospital admissions.

 The fact is that if you're on a low wage or a benefit - or get repeatedly shunted between the two - you can't afford to buy or maintain a house (or at least not in a place that also has jobs), and you can't afford decent housing at market rents either (even with the landlord's subsidy, otherwise known as the accommodation supplement).

(The middle class rush to buy up cheap housing as an investment for their old age is partly to blame for pushing up prices and rents, but hey, what else were they supposed to put their savings into - finance companies?)

So what are you supposed to do? The "state house for life" argument is just a red herring - transience is a much bigger problem, as people try to solve the enough jobs/enough beds/affordable rent conundrum. If affordable smaller homes could be provided in every neighbourhood, there'd be no problem getting older people to downsize and free up their state house for a new family.

also asking the wrong questions

following on from julie's post about the welfare working group asking the wrong questions, i'd have to say that the housing shareholders advisory group which reported on state housing reforms is also taking the wrong perspective. they focus on the "housing for life" issue, which they seem to think is the main reason for the increased demand on state housing.

i don't suppose this group looked at issues like:

1. the average wage, the minimum wage, in fact wages in general which are no longer sufficient for many people to afford their own housing. how about recommending positive strategies that will ensure people get fair pay for their labour.

2. housing speculation, which has pushed up the price houses and therefore rents, as highly-geared speculators try to meet their mortgage payments.

3. the much reduced stock of state housing, and to which has never recovered from the major sell-off from last decade.

not surprisingly, the group wants to see more subsidies to landlords via more accommodation supplements, rather than a building up of the state housing stock so that those supplements don't have to be paid. but they ignore the wider economic issues that lead to the demand for housing.