A New Lease on Life for Battered Women : More Shelters Like New One in Central County Needed

It’s hard to imagine the desperation that must be felt by a woman who, fearing for her own safety or that of her children, has no place to turn to when fleeing from an abusive husband or boyfriend. Some women in this situation never escape from their homes alive. Others end up homeless.

While information on homeless battered women is sketchy, the National Coalition for the Homeless, based in Washington, said that several studies done in various states indicate domestic violence is a significant factor among homeless women and children. A 1992 Minnesota study of homeless shelters determined that the most common single reason for women seeking shelter was abuse. And a Denver study, also done in 1992, indicated that violence was either a primary or secondary factor in more than half of homeless families.

There’s more. A 1988 study done for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that on an average night half of the adult clients in American shelters that serve primarily families with children have been involved in domestic violence. What’s even more frightening is that there are strong indications that those who have experienced violence as children are more likely to end up homeless as adults.

Obviously, breaking the cycle of abuse is extremely important. But that takes counseling, services and, most critically, temporary housing where mothers and their children can be safe while they figure out how to achieve independence. The problem is that such shelters too often are not available, or are available only for short periods of time.

Thankfully, there are a few facilities in Orange County that can provide emergency shelter for abused women and their children. But until recently, only one offered long-term assistance. Now Human Options, based in South County, has opened a second: a 16-unit apartment house in central Orange County. This much-needed facility provides abused women with up to a year to live independently while figuring out how to support themselves and their children.

Interval House, an emergency shelter in western Orange County, provides both emergency and long-term shelter for up to 25 battered women and children, who live communally. Women’s Transitional Living Center, based in North County, also provides emergency housing. (Specific locations of all shelters are kept confidential in order to protect battered women.)

Human Options is the first of the county’s shelters, however, to provide women with long-term housing in their own apartments. Purchase of the apartment building was made possible in part by a $1.2-million, five-year grant from HUD and a $250,000 donation from the Harry and Grace Steele Foundation.

Human Options has long operated an emergency shelter where women can remain for up to 45 days. But that provides too little time for some women to restructure their lives so that they don’t end up returning to destructive relationships. Long-term housing is essential to bridge that gap.

Human Options provides a powerful model for other similar shelters. What it takes is a developer or owner who is willing to work with a nonprofit agency and some significant grants.

That may not be easy, but it can be done. Human Options and other such shelters are showing that a way can be found to extract families from dangerous situations and give women and their children a second chance.