During the recent government shutdown, domestic violence organizations scrambled. Federal money dried up and some small groups were suddenly unable to support domestic violence survivors.
Shelters quickly became overcrowded and there wasn’t enough food as SNAP benefits lagged.
It was unclear how long anyone could stay open.
On Nov. 12, the government reopened after 43 grueling days. But the damage was already done. Many victims had lost confidence after being forced to choose between safety and survival.
“You just can’t turn away a survivor,” said Dr. Linda Parker, the president and CEO of Women in Distress, a domestic violence center in Broward County. “You just can’t do it.” that
WID, which provides shelter, legal counsel, a food pantry and more, is one of the largest domestic violence agencies in the nation. It is also the only nationally accredited, state-certified, full-service domestic violence center in Broward. Survivors there range from age 22 to 52.
Broward County has among the highest number of domestic violence cases in the state. That means Parker already had her hands full before the government shutdown.
“We have been spending around $100,000 every three months to put people in hotels because the shelter is over capacity,” said Parker.
The shelter continues to overflow after the shutdown hampered the grant-making offices in the Department of Justice.
Viviana Alvarado Pacheco is the director of research and policy at The Women’s Fund Miami-Dade, a nonprofit that helps women and giirls through advocacy, research and grantmaking. She says grant programs and departments dealing with gender-based violence haven’t been fully funded for years. The shutdown only made the problem worse.
“Some of these organizations did see their funding reduced,” said Pacheco. “They have to either cut back on the services that they’re providing or just not offer them at all.”
WID was one of the lucky ones. Only 13% of the Women in Distress budget relies on government funding. The rest is city and county money, as well as money the organization raises separately.
One unexpected consequence? The pause in SNAP benefits. Survivors who once sought help from WID suddenly came back for the food pantry and other resources.
Parker says the last time this happened was during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We had survivors that were stabilized and then were calling us and saying, ‘I have to go back because I have no job and I have to go back to the abuser now because I have to feed my kids’,” said Parker.
Meanwhile, the Women’s Fund found that 28% of single-woman households in Miami-Dade rely on SNAP benefits.
“If these female householders are survivors of domestic violence, they are relying on these benefits in order to really get away from that abusive relationship,” said Pacheco.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, four of every 10 women nationally say they’ve experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner. In the nation’s capital, the majority of calls that are made to the DC Victim Hotline are about intimate partner violence. The most recent statistic showed a nearly 50% jump from the previous year.
“It’s anticipatorily devastating,” said Joan Meier, a clinical law professor at The George Washington University Law School.
Meier is also the director of the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington. The center uses research, legal advocacy and policy work to improve how courts respond to domestic violence and child abuse cases.
She said another problem cropping up for domestic violence organizations on a national level is immigration. The Justice Department last month issued a new policy that said survivors have to prove their immigration status before receiving help from programs funded by the Violence Against Women Act, a law that for the past 30 years has served as a lifeline for victims of intimate partner violence, sexual assault and stalking.
With resources already strained because of the shutdown, Meier says that undocumented survivors are becoming less likely to get help, and that shouldn’t be the case.
“Whether or not they’re legally in this country, if they’re being abused, they need help and it benefits nobody in any way to not provide that help,” said Meier.
For now, though, domestic violence organizations across the country are experiencing a bit of relief with the end of the shutdown, with some already starting to receive their grant money.
But a recent budget proposal by the White House cuts $128 million from the Office on Violence Against Women, which includes significant slashes to grants that help provide crucial domestic violence resources to survivors.
Organizations are also keeping an eye out for another potential shutdown at the beginning of next year, when funding for large parts of the government is set to expire at the end of January.
“I think all the domestic violence organizations are waking up to the reality that they need to diversify their funding sources,” Meier said. “They absolutely have to get serious about private funding, foundation funding, and individual major donors.”
Meanwhile, Parker’s plan for Women In Distress is to continue taking care of as many survivors as she can, even if there is another shutdown.
“You can’t be everything to everyone, but you try to make sure that you’ve shored up yourself enough so that you can weather the next storm,” Parker said.
