In the United States, there may be as many as 10 million people who experience domestic violence every year. Unfortunately, since homelessness and domestic violence are inextricably linked, some of these households will experience homelessness.
Since October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it’s a good time to take stock of the scope of domestic violence in America and what our shelters can do to help households fleeing abuse. This topic is important to all emergency shelters (not just domestic violence shelters), as domestic violence survivors tend to end up in a variety of shelters.
Earlier this week President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2016, which begins Oct. 1, 2015. The proposal includes strong measures to help communities re-house homeless people and prevent people who are at-risk from becoming homeless. As has become typical over the past several years, however, grave disagreement between the administration and Congress over larger budget issues means a lot of uncertainty for the future of homeless programs. The President’s budget presents a feasible best-case-scenario for progress on homelessness. (The worst-case-scenario is decidedly grimmer.) It’s based on some commonsense assumptions about homelessness.
Conference presentations from Serving Domestic Violence Survivors throughout the Homeless Assistance System
Conference Presentations from 6.7 Domestic Violence Providers and Coordinated Assessment: Challenges and Opportunities at the 2013 National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness
This document is a checklist that Continuums of Care can use to use to ensure they are considering and incorporating the needs of households fleeing domestic violence and other forms of assault and harassment into their coordinated assessment processes. In addition to addressing the individual items in this list, systems should ensure they include domestic violence providers in the discussion of how the assessment system is structured from the beginning.
