Despite a $1.3 billion women's safety budget commitment, victim-survivors remain highly at risk without more housing, advocates say.
Tuesday's budget included $222.6 million in violence prevention initiatives and $328.2 million for early intervention programs.
Carrie's Place CEO Jayne Clowes said while it was great women's safety was a key priority, it needed to be matched with permanent housing.
"For us... the biggest challenge is a complete lack of safe and affordable housing for women and children," she said.
According to SQM Research, the Hunter's rental vacancy rate dropped to 0.6 per cent in February - the equal lowest point in more than 17 years.
Ms Clowes said without a safe place to go, women were trapped in violent situations.
"If a woman and her children are looking at leaving that violent relationship and she knows she's going to be homeless, would you really want that for your children?" she said. "It's an exceptionally difficult and complex situation."
Newcastle MP Sharon Claydon said this coupled with a spike in domestic violence during the pandemic.
"There was a big increase in people who experienced violence for the first time," she said. "We've got women in our community who are choosing to remain in a violent relationship, because they know there is literally nowhere for them to go.
"So the question isn't, why doesn't she leave? But the question really is, where would she go?"
The budget included a further $100 million the Safe Places Program, which will deliver about 720 new emergency and transitional accommodation places.
But Ms Claydon said this was "a short term measure" and social and affordable housing was also sorely needed.
"These are really the short term sugar hits for an election," she said.
It comes after last year's so-called "women's budget" has not been entirely felt by local services, Ms Claydon said.
"My frontline services are saying where is this help and support? Because they've not had additional workers to help them through," she said.
Ms Clowes said Carrie's Place did receive funding from last year's budget to expand it's Staying Home, Leaving Violence program, which supports women staying in their own home, and moving the perpetrator out with assistance from police.
But data prepared by Newcastle Domestic Violence Committee showed last year's budget allocated 4.6 times more money to Western Sydney Airport than domestic violence services and this year's budget allocated $2.3 billion to 10km of road in the South Australian marginal seat of Boothby, compared to $1.3 billion for the entire women's safety package.
