This week has been a busy one for Women Up North Chief Executive Jillian Knight-Smith and her team.

On Monday Labor's Senator Jenny McAllister, Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin and Labor's Candidate for Page Patrick Deegan were at the office in East Lismore pledging to build 30,000 new affordable homes nationally with 4000 of those exclusively allocated to support women and children suffering from family and domestic violence.

Today, Federal Member for Page Kevin Hogan announced $600,000 in funding to construct new accommodation, refurbish bathrooms and kitchens, upgrade security and fire systems, and modify room layouts and flooring to improve accessibility.

“Women Up North (WUNH) have been providing a brighter future for victim-survivors for over 30 years,” Mr Hogan said.

“This funding of more than half a million dollars means that WUNH will be able to increase the support and services they offer to local women and children.”

“The impacts of domestic violence are just devastating. Everyone in our community deserves to feel safe and secure, and I thank the incredible team at WUNH for their work in helping women, children and young people find their feet again.”

WUNH Executive Officer Jillian Knight-Smith said the funding will enable them to upgrade their accommodation which provides support for First Nations women and children.

“Our current facility is aged and insufficient, the bathing and toilet facilities are out of date, there’s limited heating and cooling but the upgrade will give us a refurbished and safer accommodation and engender respect, dignity, healing and resilience,” she said.

"At the moment we have rooms with bunks and they are quite small so it's crowded and hot. We can only fit five families in the refuge and as you can imagine each family varies in size. Once you get above three families it is feeling a little bit stressed."

Currently, those families then share a small laundry, kitchen and bathroom which apart from being inconvenient and lacking privacy is not very COVID safe.

This $600,000 federal grant has been split into various stages.

• Stage 1: converting a garage into an office which will have its own bathroom. At the moment staff have to disturb those in the refuge to use the bathroom.
• Stage 2: Build more washing facilities to reduce the stress on households. Currently, one bathroom with no mobility access.
• Stage 3: Creating some separate environments with mobility access so that a family room could have an elder, a mother and a child in the same room with their own bathroom.
• Stage 4: Create a separate space downstairs.

The result will be greater capacity through accommodating a larger number of people that will be more culturally appropriate with increased privacy. Plus it will be more COVID safe.

To give you some perspective of the size of the domestic and family violence problem in our region, the amount of housing provided is not enough for every family to move into temporary accommodation.

Women Up North deal with 120 to 160 cases a month across the Northern Rivers, approximately 50% are in their own homes or stay with friends and family while the other 50% need alternative accommodation. Regularly, local motels are being used to fill a void that twenty years ago was filled by 22 transitional properties used by the service. The change in rental market conditions and the housing crisis has meant this option doesn't exist.

Jillian's next plan is to raise enough money to buy properties and work alongside the federal and state governments to build a couple of blocks of units. "To end with 30 units would be ideal," Jillian said.

"With the population planning to increase in the coming twenty years our needs will only increase," she added.

The Federal Government is delivering across the housing spectrum, with around $9 billion expected to be spent on housing and homelessness in the upcoming financial year. This includes:

• $1.6 billion is paid to the states and territories under National Housing and Homelessness Agreement
• $5.3 billion in Commonwealth Rent Assistance to help eligible Australians on welfare payments pay their rent
• $27 million for early intervention and prevention for young people at risk of homelessness under the Reconnect program
• $36 million for new and expanded emergency accommodation for women and children escaping family and domestic violence under the Safe Places initiative.

State and territory governments have primary responsibility for social housing and homelessness with the federal government supplying the funds. 

Jillian did mention she needs another $180,000 to build a lift to make the accommodation fully accessible and for outside landscaping. Kevin Hogan will look into Jillian's plea for the extra money.

Women Up North can be reached on 02 6621 7730 or you can visit their website at www.wunh.org.au 

For confidential advice, support and referrals, contact: 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), The NSW Domestic Violence Line (1800 65 64 63) or Men's Referral Service (1300 766 491).

This funding has been provided through the COVID-19 Sexual, Domestic and Family Violence Infrastructure Grant Program.