And it’s a myth she’s looking to change with a program aiming to connect clients of Carrie’s Place with private rental homes in Maitland.

Ms Haggarty said domestic violence perpetrators often controlled their partners bank accounts, which meant that survivors ended up with holes in their rental applications as they did not have access to certain information.

The Domestic Violence Rapid Rehousing Partnership program aims to open up the dialogue about that and work around the challenges survivors often suffered through no fault of their own.

“Quite often if we can’t go through a door we can go through a window,” Ms Haggarty said. “[By talking about it] we can get a better idea of their rental history.”

Ms Haggarty decided to set up the program after she found out one of their tenants had previously suffered domestic violence.

“We didn’t realise she was a survivor,” she said.

Ms Haggarty said often tenants were apprehensive about disclosing they were a survivor because they were scared their application would not be looked at favourably.

But she said the people that had come through the program had been great tenants because they were thankful to have a safe roof over their head and wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise that.

Ms Haggarty said Carrie’s Place only offered the program to clients that were likely to be successful in the private rental market, and that the real estate was completely transparent with the landlords.

“There’s no loser,” she said. “The owners feel good and have great tenants.”

She said the program also offered extra levels of support for the tenant and the landlord in the rare case the tenancy became shaky. 

It’s helped the real estate too. Ms Haggarty said the program made up 10 per cent of all private rentals the business currently managed.

She said she aimed for the program to get “as many other agents as possible changing their thinking and practice on the subject”.