Budget cuts take toll on Bay Area women's shelters
By Sean Maher
Oakland Tribune Posted: 08/06/2009 04:54:47 PM PDT
Updated: 08/07/2009 07:11:47 AM PDT

State funding for domestic violence programs was eliminated just as several Bay Area women's shelters report that spousal abuse
is rising in frequency and severity.

Shelters across the Bay Area reported losing anywhere from 15 percent to 50 percent of their funding as a result of Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's decision to cut the $16.3 million for the state's domestic violence program.

While no shelters have decided to close their doors, several shelter officials said they would have to cut or reduce their 24-hour
crisis hot lines and will lay off caseworkers who aid battered women and their children with housing, job placement, legal needs
and counseling.

Oakland resident Jacqueline, a domestic violence survivor who was left permanently disabled by her abuser and declined to give her
last name because she said he is still stalking her after 25 years, called the cuts terrifying.

"These little children, at home they hear fighting, screaming, shooting, cutting, blood. Then they're all of sudden in a new place
with strangers and other children and moms, and it's traumatic," she said. "That's why they need ladies to come and do the therapy
and counseling. They need that; those are needs."

Jacqueline said her time in an East Bay battered women's shelter helped save her life.

"I needed them at that time," she said. "They gave me a safe and secure home to live in, helped me with getting jobs, getting
restraining orders, custody hearings. I needed help with everything when I was in the shelter. I didn't have anything, and I was
8 months pregnant. Didn't have anything, nobody, nowhere to go."

In Contra Costa County, the 25 percent cuts from the operating budget of the STAND Against Domestic Violence advocacy
group comes in the midst of a deadly spate of domestic violence. During the past 12 months, 16 people have died in domestic
violence-related cases in Contra Costa County, including a murder in Antioch and a murder-suicide in Pinole last month,
STAND's fundraising manager Patti Cawood said.

Calls to the organization's 24-hour crisis line have increased 54 percent over the calendar year, and requests for shelter have
risen 26 percent, she said.

In Santa Clara County, four shelters will face about $800,000 in total cuts, according to Tamon Norimoto, resource development
director for San Jose-based Asian-Americans for Community Involvement.

"We can get a woman out of immediate danger, but in many cases we need to completely rebuild people's lives," Norimoto said.
"ESL classes, job training, how to handle restraining orders or filing for divorce. Many clients have never had access to
finances. Some of them don't even know about 911. The people hurt the most here are those who need the most help."

In San Mateo County, where Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse is the only agency solely devoted to serving survivors of
domestic abuse, 911 calls of spousal abuse are up in every city 20 percent to 30 percent, executive director Melissa Lukin said.
"There are only 20 beds in the whole county for women's shelters," Lukin said. "Last year, we had 700 demands for shelter and could
only service 100 of those." Meanwhile, Oakland's only battered women's shelter, A Safe Place, will lose half its funding and have to
cut its motel program, which houses women who call in the middle of the night with emergencies,
executive director Carolyn Russell said.

"It will impact women everywhere even just knowing services have been decreased," she said.




Executive Director Ann King of the Tri-Valley Haven in Livermore, which shelters and works with battered women and children,
said the cuts seem like policy moving back decades in time.

"We're hoping we can get some of this (money) reinstated," King said, adding that the governor "has funds in the reserve, which most
folks think should be for a rainy day — and he has created an absolute thunderstorm."

Schwarzenegger used a line-item veto July 28 to cut the $16.3 million in state funding for the 94 battered women's shelters across
California, as part of almost $500 million in cuts that largely targeted health and human services, said H.D. Palmer, State Department
of Finance deputy director.

The Assembly had eliminated about $1 billion in state income from the budget proposal by leaving untouched local gas tax revenues, the
taking of which public works officials across the state said would have crippled their departments and led to the collapse of numerous
road systems.

Schwarzenegger's cuts were made? to balance the budget and set aside $500 million in reserves for unforeseen emergencies such as an
earthquake or wildfire, Palmer said.

State Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, this week introduced legislation to restore the shelters' funding, calling it absolutely
vital that they stay open.

"We know these are incredibly hard times," STAND director of development Michelle Davis said, "and people may ask, 'There are all kinds
of services out there. Why should I care about this over funding for kids?'

"We believe domestic violence is a root cause of violence in our society. If we do not pay attention to these homes where kids are being
raised in extremely violent situations, we'll see more violence in schools, teen rape, gang violence. This is what kids are learning at
home, and we've got to stop it there to improve our society as a whole."

Davis urged citizens to contact their local legislators to support Yee's effort to draw $16.3 million from the victims' compensation fund,
which he said has a current balance of $136 million, to continue funding shelters.

Marcia Blackstock, the executive director of Bay Area Women Against Rape, the nation's first rape crisis center, said: "We're OK
because we are not a dual agency. We just provide sexual assault services, and the cuts were made to domestic violence. "...

"I'm very, very worried. Once they start cutting services to women and children, we are next."