Frontline perspectives on the Canada-New Brunswick Housing Benefit for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

Abstract

This thesis examines how frontline workers in New Brunswick understand and navigate the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Housing Benefit as they support women fleeing situations of intimate partner violence (IPV). Drawing on qualitative interviews with service providers across the province, the study analyzes how structural housing scarcity, administrative contradictions, documentation challenges, and the relational and emotional labour of frontline work shape the implementation of the benefit and influence survivors’ housing pathways. Guided by Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) and the Just Housing framework, the analysis demonstrates that the benefit’s effectiveness is constrained by intersecting structural and systemic inequities, including low vacancy rates, rising rents, fragmented service systems, landlord stigma, and the discretionary power of private rental actors. The findings show that frontline workers play a critical role in mediating these barriers by interpreting unclear rules, advocating for survivors, and absorbing the emotional demands created by system gaps. Survivors with limited income, caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, precarious immigration status, or rural residence face heightened challenges in accessing and maintaining housing, illustrating how gendered and intersectional inequities shape encounters with the benefit. The study contributes new insight into how portable housing benefits function in the context of IPV, extending scholarship on street-level bureaucracy (SLB) by identifying landlords as informal gatekeepers whose discretionary decisions significantly affect program outcomes. The thesis concludes that improving survivors’ housing stability requires structural investments in affordable housing, clearer and trauma-aligned administrative processes, stronger tenant protections, and greater institutional support for frontline workers. These findings underscore the need for housing policies that are gender-responsive and attentive to the realities of women navigating violence and housing precarity in New Brunswick.