Transportation and housing shortfalls complicate access to help for domestic violence survivors
On the road…again and again
Stuck in shelter
Agencies will also house people in motels when their shelter is full.
High housing costs — and less funding to cover them — make it difficult for survivors to find affordable, long-term housing so they end up staying at the shelter longer.
Agencies have pre-determined limits on how long they can house someone in the shelter, but those limits are often pushed.
“We're supposed to be a 30-day length of stay, but how do you put a mom and three kids out on the street because their apartment is not going to be ready for another two months?” Johnson said. “I can't do that.”
Southwest Safehouse is a shelter in Durango operated by Volunteers of America Colorado. It’s the only shelter with an undisclosed location within five counties in southwest Colorado, senior director Veronica Martin said.
The shelter is one of the largest that Rocky Mountain PBS spoke to, with 22 beds and room for overflow. It also offers a longer initial length of stay than most other agencies’ shelters across the state, who have fewer beds.
Martin said the program is initially six weeks, and residents can apply for up to 90 additional days of stay.
“But that's still nowhere near long enough to find housing,” Martin said. “They're trying to get a housing voucher and the waitlist is really long. I've seen people get on [the waitlist] and it's two years until they might be selected.”
"If we want to create a sustainable change, there needs to be more available housing for people to get into, especially that's affordable."
Housing and transportation challenges are linked.
In Durango, the housing that survivors are able to get into is usually not within the city limits. Martin herself works in Durango but lives in Farmington, New Mexico.
The farther that people are from the city, the farther they have to travel for services and the harder it is to access public transportation.
Rising costs, shrinking budgets
Among other services, federal funding from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) can be used for transportation, relocation, transitional housing costs and emergency shelter, so it’s a valuable funding source for many agencies.
“VOCA is overall about 44% of the funding for the safehouse,” Martin said.
VOCA creates a pool of federal funds, fed by restitution and lawsuit settlements, for agencies like those serving survivors of domestic violence. That funding is then distributed on the state level.
But that pool has been shrinking since 2018, meaning there’s less money to go around. Domestic violence agencies across the state are facing significant cuts in VOCA funding.
The Arkansas Valley Resource Center, which helped Tina and her kids get to safety, will face a 28% cut in its 2025 VOCA funding.
“With those drops, we’re going to have to just look at where can we cut costs, [and] is it going to affect our services that we provide,” executive director Brooke Leonard said.
Leonard and other advocates across the state are busy fundraising and applying for grants to make up for the funding lost in the VOCA cuts, so that survivors like Tina always have someone to call for a ride.
“I swear they move mountains,” Tina said. “I swear they do, to make sure that you feel safe.”