Systematic Review of Intimate Partner Violence and Housing Instability with an Emphasis on Practice Implications

Background and Purpose: Survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) are at increased risk for housing instability and homelessness, with housing assistance being one of the most common services requested by survivors. Previous reviews have focused on the effectiveness of housing interventions for IPV survivors, but no reviews have focused on the nature of the relation between IPV and housing instability. This study seeks to synthesize the existing literature, characterizing the nature of the relation between housing instability and/or homelessness and IPV in quantitative research and exploring victim accounts of the impact of housing instability and/or homelessness on their safety in qualitative research. Additionally, this study aims to summarize the practice and policy implications noted across the overall body of literature exploring IPV and housing instability.
Methods: Following PRISMA guidelines, five bibliographic databases (PsychInfo, ERIC, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and SocIndex) were searched for relevant peer-reviewed articles. Citations (n = 1204) were exported into Covidence, a screening and extraction software for systematic review. Following de-duplication and initial screening, 96 articles were identified for full-text screening. Two researchers with doctoral-level training conducted each round of screening, and data extraction from the included articles. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the qualitative articles, as well as all practice and policy implications.
Results: A total of 22 articles (12 qualitative, 10 quantitative) met inclusion criteria following full-text screening. Results suggest there are varying definitions and measurement approaches for housing instability within populations reporting IPV. Despite methodological and measurement limitations, most studies found a significant, complex and bidirectional relationship between IPV and housing instability. Most studies included women IPV survivors, with few studies considering other marginalized populations. However, two articles included transgender IPV survivors. In the qualitative literature, four themes were identified to represent the negative impact of housing on the safety of IPV survivors: housing instability as abuse, housing market issues, lack of appropriate services, and mental health implications. The theme “housing market issues,” also comprised three sub-categories: cost of living, landlord bias & discrimination, and safe, adequate housing. No themes were identified that represented housing as a facilitator of safety; however, strengths-based approaches to managing housing instability were noted. As for practice implications across the literature, four primary areas of need were identified, including 1) policy and advocacy; 2) collaboration; 3) clinical and interventions; and 4) training and education.
Conclusions and Implications: This study advances the field by synthesizing the state of the field’s quantitative and qualitative research findings on IPV and housing instability, as well as summarizing all suggested practice and policy implications. Future research is warranted on the relation between IPV and housing instability with a focus on temporal ordering and influence of social context. Diversity in samples and representation of vulnerable populations should be increased in future research. Identifying a common measure of housing instability could help to improve researchers’ ability to synthesize data across the field examining housing instability with IPV survivors, which would in turn help to streamline their communication of findings to policy makers.