Home of Your Own

Women and children represent 74% of people accessing homelessness services, and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women and children in Victoria. Victoria’s new rental laws are designed to protect renters facing family violence, but awareness of these protections is low among renters facing family violence and the frontline workers supporting them. Home of Your Own empowers renters facing family violence to understand their rights and options, then offers practical and tangible support to take early, preventative steps to stay safely housed and avoid further financial impacts of family violence.

Justice Connect used human-centred design principles to create Home of Your Own. At each stage of the design and development, Justice Connect collaborated with women who have lived experience of family violence and homelessness, embedding learnings from survivor-advocates through iterative project rhythms to reach the final product. Home of Your Own offers safe and accessible navigation, supporting renters by: - providing personalised legal information, using plain language to explain complex legal concepts including through an explanatory video, - generating bespoke documents, communicating safety needs to their rental providers, and - targeted legal, financial, housing and family violence support options.

Family violence can endanger someone in their home and affect their ability to maintain housing. When escaping violence, victim-survivors too often face a choice between remaining in an unsafe home or experiencing homelessness. Home of Your Own equips renters facing family violence to make informed decisions about their rights and options, and supports them to act, offering practical legal guidance, tailored document generation and targeted referral pathways. The tool will also feed into Justice Connect’s evidence-based systemic advocacy to stop homelessness before it starts, particularly through improving laws, policies and practices to better protect Victorian renters facing family violence.

Home of Your Own provides legal guidance based on whether a renter wants to safely stay in a home, leave a rental, or make a new home safer. Key design features and outputs include: - An intelligent, logic-driven question flow which helps renters identify what rights are available to them based on their current situation and what support they are looking for, underpinned by a foundational decision tree which considers over 40 legal scenarios. - Personalised guidance helping renters understand their options, and take proactive steps to act on their rights, such as how to safely avoid eviction, or remove a person using violence from their rental home and create a new rental agreement in their name. - Customised document generation to help renters communicate with their rental providers about their housing, safety and privacy needs, including changing the locks, or making other modifications, such as the installation of lights and security cameras. - Targeted referral pathways to additional assistance, including specialised legal, housing, financial, and family violence support services. The tool is anonymous, safe, and free to use, with crucial safety features, giving the person experiencing violence essential autonomy over the distribution and use of their personal information.