Housing is where leaving most often fails. A woman can have a job, a lawyer and a protection order, and still return to a violent home because no landlord will take her.
Why she gets refused
- No guarantor, because the guarantor would ordinarily be her husband or his family.
- No payslip history, because being prevented from working is a form of abuse rather than a choice.
- No previous tenancy in her own name, because the tenancy was in his.
- An inability to pay one or two years of rent in advance, which is the standard expectation in much of Nigeria and the single largest obstacle we encounter.
- No proof of address, which is circular, because the address she has is the one she is leaving.
None of these say anything about whether she will pay her rent or look after your property. They describe what was done to her rather than anything about her as a tenant.
What helps
- Consider a guarantee from an organisation. We act as guarantor in some cases, and other charities and employers do the same. That transfers the risk you are worried about to somebody with a track record.
- Take rent monthly or quarterly where you can. The advance is the obstacle far more than the amount. A woman who can pay monthly indefinitely often cannot pay a year on the day.
- Judge on the employment letter rather than the tenancy history. A current contract is better evidence of future rent than a past address.
- Keep her details out of shared listings and groups. Landlord groups where tenant details circulate are a genuine risk and a common way women are located.
- Never confirm to a caller that she lives there. Brief the security staff and the caretaker specifically, by name. This is where it goes wrong, not at your level.
Practical safety in the property
Small things matter more than they sound.
- A lock that works and that she controls, changed before she moves in.
- A door viewer.
- Lighting at the entrance.
- Notice before anyone attends for maintenance, and never an expectation that she admits a stranger without warning.
- A tenancy in her own name, not shared with anybody.
If she asks for the locks to be changed, treat it as a reasonable request rather than a negotiation.
If he finds the address
Tell us at once. Do not confirm anything to him, do not let him wait on the premises, and call the police if he will not leave.
Write down the date, the time and what was said. That log is often the clearest evidence a court sees, because you are an independent witness. Why the record matters so much is set out separately.
Do not try to resolve it by speaking to him. It rarely helps and it tells him he is dealing with somebody who will engage.
What we do
Where we place a woman we stay involved. You have a named contact rather than a tenant who appeared from nowhere. We help with the documents, we can act as guarantor in some circumstances, and if something goes wrong you can call us rather than guess.
Safe housing is one of our six programmes, and it is the one where a single landlord willing to take a monthly tenancy changes an outcome more than any amount of money we could spend.
The questions landlords actually ask us
Three come up every time, and they are all reasonable.
Will there be trouble at the property. Usually not. Most women we place are moving somewhere he does not know about, and the whole arrangement is built around keeping it that way. Where there is a known risk we tell you before you agree, not afterwards.
Who do I call if something happens. Us, at any hour. You are not being handed a tenant and left with the problem, and that is the difference between this and an ordinary letting.
What if she cannot pay. Tell us early rather than at the point of eviction. Most rent problems in the first year are caused by something specific and temporary, usually a job ending or a court date, and both are things we can act on if we know.
What it is worth
A tenancy in her own name is the point at which leaving stops being a stay somewhere and becomes a life. It is what a school needs for a place, what an employer needs for a contract, and what a court looks at when deciding where children live.
Landlords are not usually thanked for this because it looks like an ordinary letting from the outside. It is the single most decisive thing anybody outside her family can provide.
If you have property to offer
Tell us what you have and where. We will tell you honestly whether we can use it, and we will not pretend a property is suitable when it is not.
If you have work rather than property, the employment side is the other half of the same problem, and the two together are what make leaving permanent.
Questions people ask
Is this higher risk than a normal tenancy?
The financial risk is comparable and often lower, because there is an organisation and frequently an employer involved. The difference is that you need to be careful with information about who lives there.
What if her husband finds the address?
Tell us at once. Do not confirm anything to him, do not let him wait on the premises, and call the police if he will not leave.
Can you guarantee the rent?
In some cases, yes. Tell us the property and the terms and we will tell you what we can do.
She has no payslips or references. Is that a problem?
It usually reflects having been prevented from working. An employment letter and an organisational guarantee are better evidence than a tenancy history.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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