Powerful exhibition revealing the hidden face of women’s homelessness heads to Darebin

Illustrations and photography telling the stories of three women and their experiences of homelessness across Victoria will go on display at Northcote Town Hall this week.

Walk In Her Shoes follows the journeys of three women who became homeless at different stages of life – as a young person, a mother and an older Victorian – and demonstrates how family violence, poverty and a lack of safe housing can push women into crisis.

The exhibition comes as the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures show women and girls made up 59 per cent of Victorians seeking help from homelessness services in the 2024-25 financial year, with nearly 62,000 women and girls coming to services.

There were more than 13,000 girls under 18 and more than 6,800 were women aged 55 and over. More than half of women and girls coming to homelessness services had experienced family and domestic violence.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a community forum bringing together lived experience advocates, frontline services, local MPs and community members to discuss what is pushing more women into homelessness in Darebin and across Victoria, and what needs to change to keep them safely housed.

The panel includes Diana Connell, whose story is featured in the exhibition, alongside Member for Northcote Kat Theophanous, Member for Northern Metropolitan Region Anasina Gray-Barberio, MOSS CEO Mark Goodie, and Juno senior homelessness practitioner Eve Giles.

Council to Homeless Persons CEO Deborah Di Natale said the exhibition showed the human reality behind Victoria’s social housing shortfall, particularly for women and children escaping violence.

“In Victoria, women and girls make up the majority of people turning to homelessness services,” Ms Di Natale said.

“These stories show what those numbers mean in real life. Homelessness can happen to a young woman escaping violence, a mother trying to keep her children safe, or an older woman who has simply run out of housing options.

“Victoria needs close to 80,000 extra social housing properties over the next decade just to reach the national average.

“The recent social housing investment from the Victorian Government is a vital first step, but it must be the foundation for a much larger pipeline of safe, permanent homes.”