Shelter for Abuse Victims Wins U.S. Grant : Aid: Domestic Violence Council, one of two county groups awarded federal funds, will receive $31,239.

An Antelope Valley shelter that aids abused women and a few battered men is one of two programs in Los Angeles County that will receive Federal Emergency Shelter Grant funds, officials said Monday.

The Antelope Valley Domestic Violence Council, which provides temporary housing to about 400 adults and their children annually, will receive $31,239 from the federal aid program--a fraction of the amount it requested. The council annually assists another 450 people who do not live at the shelter but have encountered violence in their homes.

Rosario Agmata, assistant director of the council, which runs the Valley Oasis Shelter, said Monday’s grant is just one of many for which the organization applied to meet its annual budget of about $725,000.

The council had asked for $390,000 from the federal program, including $200,000 to renovate its buildings.

“I’m happy we got part of what we requested,” Agmata said. “We would have been happier if we had gotten all the money we requested.”

But she added: “Every little thing helps us.”

Many of the agencies applying for the grants received nothing at all, said John Firth, assistant director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which distributed the federal funds.

Statewide, 80 programs asked for a total of $9.2 million, he said, but the department had only $5.1 million available.

The Antelope Valley program was one of five in Los Angeles County that applied for a grant. The county’s only other grant--$279,656--went to Stop Homelessness, a program in the Rio Hondo area. In all, Firth said, 50 programs received funds.

Firth said his department disqualified the Antelope Valley shelter’s request for $200,000 in renovation funds because the construction work was unlikely to be finished soon enough to meet a federal deadline. Other allocation rules further reduced the amount of the grant, he said.

The Antelope Valley is known for having an unusually high rate of child abuse, but the area’s domestic violence shelter is also one of the busiest in the nation, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Denham, a Domestic Violence Council board member.

Denham said the shelter, which can house up to 60 people at a time in its remote cluster of desert cottages, is heavily used partly because it has more beds than most domestic violence shelters. As a result, it aids many abused people from other counties and states, where beds are unavailable. It also houses abuse victims from distant areas when authorities want to hide them from a spouse, Denham said.

Although it serves primarily women, the shelter has housed two or three battered men with their children in recent years, and it currently is counseling five battered men who do not live on the premises, shelter officials said.