Domestic violence shelters scramble to cover cut state funding

Battered women's shelters in Orange County didn't lose all of their state funding under the new California budget. But they did lose a good chunk. KPCC's Susan Valot says now they are scrambling to fill the gaps.

Susan Valot: Human Options is one of four certified battered women's shelters in Orange County. It's one of the smaller ones. With the state budget cuts, it'll lose about one-fifth, or roughly $200,000, of its budget. Vivian Clecak is the chief executive director of Human Options.

Vivian Clecak: Women will be in greater danger. Families may not get help. And, of course, some wonderful staff members who are dedicated may not have jobs. But right now, we're going to try to figure out if there's anything we can do to find other sources of funding, to find private foundations or individuals that will help us keep families safe and break the cycle of domestic violence.

Valot: Clecak says they may have to let go four or five workers and cut back on programs.

Clecak: We don't want to bring fewer people into the shelter, but that might be one of the consequences. Right now, we are not clear exactly what we'll do. We are not going to let this destroy our ability to help people. But we may not be able to serve them at the level that we have served them for 20-odd years.

Valot: Vivian Clecak says Human Options is lucky that it doesn't rely solely on state funding. On top of the state legislature cuts to domestic violence programs, the governor slashed an additional $16 million from those programs statewide. Clecak says some shelters in Northern California and rural areas might close because they have no other funding.

Clecak: I wish we could, you know, gather up all those people and put them on a bus to the governor's office and let him listen to their stories. And I just hope and pray that nobody, no woman and child are left to be killed in a violent home because of this.

Valot: The Women's Transitional Living Center, which also can house men, says it'll take a $165,000 hit in lost state funding. That’s about a 10 percent reduction in its overall funding. But the shelter's Rocio Watson says it comes at the worst of times, when they're losing other funding sources, too. She says they've already cut back on staff and spending because they expected to state to clip their funding.

Rocio Watson: What that means is that we have less personnel doing the same amount of work for a lot less money with a larger group of people. In fact, we are completely full and continuously being asked to take in more folks. It just seems that, you know, as we get less funding, the need for our services increased.

Valot: Rocio Watson is in Washington, D.C. now, trying to drum up some funding from the federal government. She says she paid for that trip herself. She calls the state cuts "very near-sighted."

She says they'll have a ripple effect that goes far beyond the Women’s Transitional Living Center. Watson says more people will end up in the hospital and more people will end up in jail – and she says in the long run, that will cost more than the budget cuts will save.