by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors
“A shelter could and should be a place where you can take back your power and control,” Goodman says.
One way to empower people fleeing domestic violence? Make shelter locations public.
When the Houston Area Women’s Center (HAWC) began exploring the idea of an open domestic violence shelter — a shelter with a publicly listed address — no one was more wary than the person put in charge of leading the effort.
“I was probably the perfect person to do the research, because I was not for it,” says Sonia Corrales, interim president and CEO at HAWC. What if an abuser showed up and hurt someone? How do you ensure survivors’ safety and confidentiality?
“I was like, this is not going to happen, there’s just no way,” Corrales told Next City.
But after a few months, she found reason to believe. Research shows that survivors feel more empowered when they don’t have to stay hidden in shelters. Traditional domestic violence shelters are isolating and can feel oppressive to survivors, in some cases recreating the dynamics that existed in the abusive relationship.
That’s because traditional shelters have strict rules intended to ensure residents’ safety. If survivors don’t follow them, they risk getting kicked out. As a result, traditional shelters often cut survivors off from their support networks. The isolation that results from this, along with the secrecy of their living situation, can lead survivors to feel more shame about their situation.
In March, after years of research and coordination, HAWC opened One Safe Place, an expansion of its 5.5-acre campus in South Houston supported by a $16 million injection from the city. Here, survivors can leave campus to visit friends and family without penalty. And if survivors share where they live with their support network, they don’t risk being asked to leave the shelter.
These open shelters go by different names — disclosed, unconcealed, listed — but the idea is the same. It’s a model slowly gaining popularity across the United States. Similar shelters exist in Fort Bend, Texas; Bozeman, Montana; and Park City, Utah.
At One Safe Place, survivors walk outside with their children in tow and enjoy the butterfly garden, playground, and basketball court. Residents can get their hair done at the on-site salon, talk to an attorney, or access health care on their own time.
Lisa Goodman, a doctoral professor at Boston College who specializes in intimate partner violence, says that to empower survivors, domestic violence shelters must understand that survivors can identify their own needs and goals. And studies show that open shelters can help facilitate that.
“A shelter could and should be a place where you can take back your power and control,” Goodman says.
Not-so-secret shelters
“[VAWA] said, this is an epidemic, this is a big issue in our community, and we need to ensure that people have access to resources,” Corrales said.
In some cases, the strict rules imposed by these shelters — curfews, no guests, mandatory chores and meetings — started to feel like the relationships women were trying to flee.
“Once cell phones came into existence, it meant dropping their cell phones in a basket,” to keep locations secret, Goodman says. Survivors were already leaving their communities to go into hiding; losing their cell phones further isolated them.
Over time, keeping the address secret made less sense, Goodman says, especially as survivors came and went from shelters. “What began to be clear is that these shelters were not, in fact, secret.”
An abuser with enough willpower will find a secret shelter. A few years ago, before One Safe Place began displaying its address, Corrales remembers that a resident’s abuser showed up and parked across the street. Police were called, and staff debated whether to move the resident to another location.
For reasons like this, One Safe Place develops a safety plan with each resident to help them navigate leaving the campus. For trips to school, work, or grocery shopping, staff help survivors understand and manage the risks of going off-site. And survivors are not allowed to post images or videos from inside the complex to social media to protect the confidentiality of other residents.
To open One Safe Place, HAWC spent years building relationships with the police department, the district attorney’s office, and neighboring businesses. HAWC partnered with the Houston Police Department’s Domestic Abuse Response Team to coordinate survivor safety. When One Safe Place calls, the team knows to respond immediately.
“If you don’t have the laws, the partners and a community that is ready to talk about domestic violence, [open shelters] will be a harder sell,” Corrales says.
“Part of healing is having access to your support system and being in community, and it’s hard to do that in a confidential setting,” says Olga Rodriguez-Vidal, Safe Horizon’s vice president of shelter operations.
So they initiated the Open Shelter Project, a research effort driven by Goodman, to understand how it could work for them.
Their conclusion? They’d love to open a listed shelter. It would mean being less punitive; for survivors who inadvertently exposed their location via social media, or were coerced into revealing their location by their abuser, discharge proceedings wouldn’t have to happen.
But there was one obstacle: money. In New York, a disclosed shelter is unprecedented. No one wants to fund an open domestic violence shelter, and then a survivor be found by her abuser.
“There’s a lot of saturation of domestic violence shelters in Manhattan, in the Bronx,” says Rodriguez-Vidal. “There really isn’t an appetite for this, because it’s so different than the industry standard.”
Rodriguez-Vidal acknowledges that some survivors need confidential housing, but opening a listed shelter would diversify the resources available to their clients.
Corrales and her team approached the open shelter concept, knowing that domestic violence is a public health problem. One Safe Place is designed as a one-stop shop where survivors can connect with advocates and receive free legal help and forensic examinations.
To an outsider, this might sound like a prison, but for survivors on the inside, according to Corrales, these measures help them feel safe. HAWC ran a brief pilot to ensure residents were comfortable with the security guards before making them a permanent fixture. And HAWC never shares information about the survivors staying there.
It’s a model that Corrales hopes will nudge the gender violence movement forward.
“I stand on the shoulders of many advocates, particularly women, who have paved the way for all of us. Without their work, this would not be possible,” Corrales says.
This story was produced in partnership with The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, and policy.
This story was produced by Next City, a nonprofit newsroom covering solutions for equitable cities, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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Source: Black Enterprise
