to flee urgently and may end up in highly precarious housing situations, exposing them to further abuse and exploitation. Public policies must therefore address women’s specific dif­ficulties in remaining housed following separations. Access to social housing must stop being an“protracted adminis­trative process,” with bureaucratic barriers at every stage of the allocation process. It is not uncommon for the docu­ments required by social landlords to prove separation 15 to be difficult to obtain because of delays in the justice system, leaving women caught in administrative limbo. Combined with the fact that they are often not considered priority applicants, this makes it difficult for women to ob­tain social housing. To address this issue, the City of Paris introduced separation as a criterion in its housing allocation scoring system as early as 2014, assigning it 40 points. Another priority should be to develop ambitious housing policies that enable women experiencing domestic violence to leave the shared home safely. This must begin with ex­panding access to emergency accommodation. The number of emergency shelter places should be urgently increased and adequately funded. According to the National Federa­tion for Women’s Solidarity(FNSF), at least 15,000 addition­al emergency shelter places are needed, while nearly 40% of women experiencing domestic violence who seek emergen­cy accommodation are currently unable to access it. Women-only accommodation facilities could also be devel­oped to help women feel safe 16 . With a view to ensuring long-term rehousing for this group, social housing providers also have a role to play. They can give priority to women experiencing violence, either by drawing on the State’s“pri­ority groups” allocation quota or by assigning a high weight­ing to the“victim of violence” criterion in housing allocation scoring systems. At the legislative level, the law of 26 May 2004 allowing for the eviction of abusive partners should be strengthened and improved so that victims can remain in their homes and do not have to bear the cost of their courage. Women Are More Likely to Rely on Temporary Accommodation with Friends or Relatives When a person no longer has personal housing, the last “safety net” before homelessness is often staying temporar­ily with a third party—friends, relatives, or acquaintances. Of the 4 million poorly housed people in France, more than 600,000 are estimated to live involuntarily with third par­ties, twice the number of homeless people. This relatively hidden dimension of poor housing mainly af­fects women 17 . However, women staying with third parties are far more exposed than men to situations of insecurity, exploitation, and abuse. Such arrangements are rarely free of charge; women are often expected to provide financial contributions or services such as childcare. In some cases, the bargain imposed is sexual in nature. According to the Hebtiers survey conducted by the Samu Social of Paris 18 , 21% of people without personal housing staying with third parties in the Paris region reported having been sexually harassed or assaulted at least once during the previous year by the person hosting them. To combat this invisible form of poor housing in which wom­en are disproportionately affected, two complementary ap­proaches are required. First, the root causes of this expand­ing phenomenon must be addressed, including growing individual precarity, structural dysfunctions in the housing market, and shortcomings in public policy. Second, support and assistance must be provided to those concerned in order to help them through this period and en­able them to secure independent housing. Public authorities can mobilize several tools: strengthening solidarity-based hosting initiatives by funding associations, formalizing such arrangements by transforming them into co-housing sys­tems, or reinforcing access to administrative registration, since without an official address, access to housing be­comes almost impossible. 15  This refers to a non-conciliation order issued by a family court judge as part of divorce proceedings. 16  Modelled on the women-only day centres run by Paris’s emergency homelessness service( Samu Social), which offer women experiencing homelessness a safe place to spend time away from the streets. 17  According to the 2020 Housing Survey, women accounted for 55% of people who reported relying on accommodation provided by friends or relatives, compared with 52% of the population as a whole. 18  The study covers adults, as well as individuals not officially recognised as minors, who attended a day centre in the Île-de-France region and had stayed with friends or rel­atives during the previous 12 months(8,760 people), at the time of the survey(September 2024–March 2025). Gender Inequalities in Housing Policies in France 3