How to disrupt the domestic violence-to-homelessness pipeline

Domestic violence is a big driver of homelessness for women, numerous studies cited by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services show. However, single women in particular are an undercounted segment of the population experiencing homelessness, and that can translate into a dearth of funding and services they need to regain housing and stability.

In DC and many other jurisdictions, homelessness is measured by counting shelter users and people who are visibly homeless, like those living in tents along Rock Creek or sleeping around Union Station. This approach tends to undercount women, who often view shelters and encampments as dangerous. Women experiencing homelessness are more likely to couch surf with family and friends, or when other options fail, to trade sex for shelter.

Helping this subset of the population experiencing homelessness requires an intersectional approach. Kris Thompson, CEO of Calvary Women’s Services, believes homeless survivors need assistance finding homes and building up the emotional strength and independence necessary to stay away from their abusers. Trauma-informed service, which emphasizes a holistic and compassionate approach to supporting survivors, is the best way to meet both objectives, Thompson said.

Domestic violence, homelessness, and the pandemic

Domestic violence and homelessness are connected. Indeed, domestic violence is the top cause of homelessness for women. To understand why, it’s important to understand the dynamics of abuse.

Abusers usually have some form of power over their victims. Women in abusive relationships often depend on their abusers for housing or other basic necessities. They may also be emotionally dependent on their abusers, especially if they are intimate partners or family members. Abusive relationships don’t always start out violent, but once they get to that point, the violence “usually escalate[s] in frequency and severity,” according to the UN.

Women who leave abusive relationships are at heightened risk for homelessness. Abusers often alienate their victims from friends and family, so they can’t rely on traditional support networks for help. And, high housing costs in cities like DC make finding a new place hard to do.

The pandemic exacerbated these challenges. The quarantine phase of the pandemic was associated with increased depression, alcohol abuse, stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These conditions created a “catastrophic milieu” for domestic violence to occur, according to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

At the same time, leaving became harder. Many people were afraid to open extra bedrooms even for family and friends, and finding a new place was off the table for the millions who lost their jobs. Social distancing rules also made it difficult for shelters to use their space at full capacity. And, once restrictions were lifted, many service providers faced an intake backlog.

Intersectional services

DC has a coordinated entry system for residents experiencing homelessness. Services are provided in three categories: families, individuals, and youth. Female victims of domestic abuse can be found in all three categories, but Calvary focuses on individuals. Thompson and other local experts said DC has tended to focus its resources on family and youth services, leaving a critical service gap for single women. Indeed, Calvary’s average client is a Black woman in her fifties.

Calvary uses a trauma-informed approach, according to Thompson, which starts with meeting women where they are. She said many clients do not initially see themselves as victims of domestic violence, but if you ask if someone in their last home hit or otherwise abused them, they will often say yes. Thompson said new arrivals “often don’t have the language to describe themselves as domestic violence survivors. You can only really vocalize it once you are safe.”

With this recognition front and center, Calvary starts by offering a safe place where women can exhale before they work on next steps. In Anacostia, the organization operates a housing program with beds for up to 40 women. It also runs programs at smaller sites for women who need extra protections to keep their abusers from tracking them down. Among other measures, residents do not receive mail or schedule Uber pickups at these locations.

Each woman is assigned a case manager who helps her prepare for independent living. They help women replace lost IDs, establish credit, and apply for disability, while on-site nurses and therapists offer classes and art workshops. Calvary also helps clients find stable permanent housing. In DC, this usually means getting women a voucher through the city’s housing choice voucher program.

Survivors can thrive with support

Miss Cynthia (for safety reasons we are not using her last name) spent ten months in Calvary’s Anacostia program. She worked as a laundry manager at a hotel for six years and retired in 2019. During the pandemic, her husband started abusing her. To cope, she said she began using drugs and spent time with people who weren’t good for her. When she came to Calvary last January, she had only been clean for five days and wasn’t sure they would let her in. When they did, “I cried tears of joy,” she told me.

While she was at Calvary, Miss Cynthia took advantage of all the programming she could. Her two favorite classes were ‘Negotiation Works’ and ‘Change Purse.’ In Negotiation, women used role play to learn how to navigate difficult situations; in Change Purse, they learned how to create budgets. Her time wasn’t without bumps in the road — she changed rooms several times because of disputes with other residents, and briefly relapsed. In order to remain, she had to agree to a curfew and other restrictions, so she buckled down.

“I took therapy,” she told me. “It’s a good place to learn about yourself, to relearn who you are, to never be ashamed of who you are.”

Today, Miss Cynthia lives in a new apartment building near Audi Field, and her rent is covered through a housing choice voucher. She likes to keep busy. She volunteers for Bread for the City, and has applied to help her former Negotiation teacher as an ambassador for the program.

Filling a void

Calvary’s services are now at the vanguard of DC’s ongoing effort to rethink its homeless services. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s 2015-2020 Homeward DC plan to slash homelessness and improve services was upended by the pandemic, but in 2021 she updated it and made some important shifts. Two are relevant to Calvary’s work.

First, she pledged to put more resources into services for single residents experiencing homelessness — a category critics claim received short shrift amidst the city’s “often single-minded focus on reducing family homelessness,” according to DCist/WAMU reporting. Bowser also acknowledged that DC’s single adult population experiencing homelessness is aging. Like Calvary’s average client, they will need wrap-around services, such as health care and legal help.

Advocates say the best way to serve the District’s residents experiencing homelessnesis to ensure that there are various types of services to meet their specific needs — and to add more money in the budget to do so.