California’s new law aims to close a housing gap for domestic violence survivors

Domestic violence survivors often struggle to find housing, and California’s “Unseen and Unheard Housing Act” will help make more housing available to meet their specific needs.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill Sunday requiring cities and counties to factor in domestic violence survivors when planning for future housing.

The state’s 540 local governments are required to submit a plan for land use every five to eight years, depending on population size. The plan analyzes and proposes ways to meet community needs around climate change, health, economics and equitable opportunities. Within that is an assessment of housing supply and demand, which is required by law to include overviews of housing for seniors, people with disabilities, farmworkers, women-led households, households with five or more members and the unhoused.

Now cities and counties will have to account for the needs of domestic violence survivors, too.

“Our hope is that this bill will significantly increase the supply of permanent housing for survivors, and will bring funding, attention, and action to address the invisible crisis of domestic violence survivors falling into homelessness when they leave their domestic violence situations,” said Jennifer Willover, housing policy analyst at the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, which coordinates domestic violence advocacy and response across the state.

Domestic violence and housing go hand in hand. Some victims choose to stay in a home with abuse in order to keep them — or their kids — housed, while others find there is no place to go when they need to escape violence. 

Domestic violence is often a precursor to homelessness: 17 percent of unhoused cisgender women experienced intimate partner violence — most often physical — in the six months prior to homelessness, according to a 2024 report.

Among unhoused survivors of recent domestic violence, 40 percent said the abuse was a factor in leaving their prior housing. Twenty percent said it was the main reason.

According to DomesticShelters.org, at least 70 percent of California’s 165 domestic violence services organizations provide emergency housing. But those stays are typically only one to three months; longer-term support is much more difficult for survivors to find — and funding for it is drying up.

Stable housing in the months and years after fleeing abuse is hard to come by. Cost is an enormous barrier, and survivors don’t always have income or money of their own. According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, many abusive partners exert financial control over victims, such as by forbidding them from working, refusing to put assets in their name or not allowing access to bank accounts.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis ranks California as one of the highest cost-of-living states, and rent in the most populous cities can be thousands of dollars a month. Credit checks can also make it harder to find a place to stay if an abusive partner coerced a victim into taking out loans or opened credit cards in their name.

This new law doesn’t provide any solutions, but it elevates the needs of domestic violence survivors who make up a large share of the population. Recent research from Tulane University showed 61 percent of women, 45 percent of men and 84 percent of gender-nonconforming people reported experiencing intimate partner violence across their lifetimes.