Box Hill exhibition reveals the women behind Victoria’s homelessness crisis

A moving exhibition that puts faces and names to Victoria’s growing crisis of women’s homelessness will arrive in Box Hill next week, telling the stories of three women through illustration and photography.

Walk In Her Shoes traces the lives of three women who lost their housing at very different points – one as a young person, one as a mother, and one in her later years – and shows how a mix of family violence, poverty and too few safe homes pushes women into housing crisis.

The exhibition lands as Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures confirm women and girls account for the majority of people seeking help from Victorian homelessness services. In 2024-25 they made up 59 per cent of Victorians seeking support, with close to 62,000 women and girls reaching out.

Among them were more than 13,000 girls under 18 and over 6,800 women aged 55 and older. For more than half, family and domestic violence was part of the story.

A community forum will run alongside the exhibition, drawing together women with lived experience, frontline workers, local MPs and residents to talk through what is driving more women into homelessness in Whitehorse and across the state, and what it will take to keep them housed.

The panel includes lived experience advocate Annerliegh Pappos, alongside Aiv Puglielli MP, Member for North Eastern Metro, Liberal Candidate for Box Hill Sally Houguet, Salvation Army Homelessness Manager John Cullen, and Family Access Network CEO Michelle Thompson.

Council to Homeless Persons CEO Deborah Di Natale said the exhibition put a human face to a housing shortfall that was hitting women and children escaping violence hardest.

“More women than men now come to homelessness services in Victoria, including here in Whitehorse, yet the public image of homelessness hasn’t caught up with that reality,” Ms Di Natale said.

“This exhibition asks people to sit with three of those stories and understand that homelessness can reach a young woman fleeing violence, a mum trying to shield her kids, or an older woman who has simply run out of options.

“Victoria is still around 80,000 social housing properties short of the national average. The government’s recent investment matters, but it has to be the start of a far bigger and faster building effort if women and children are going to have somewhere safe to live.”

The exhibition runs at Box Hill Community Arts Centre (470 Station Street, Box Hill) from Monday 29 June to Sunday 5 July. The community forum takes place at the same venue on Wednesday 1 July, 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Entry is free and catering will be provided.

The event is presented by Council to Homeless Persons and proudly sponsored by the Municipal Association of Victoria and Community Information and Support Victoria, with support from Whitehorse City Council.