Purple ribbons signify domestic violence awareness. (Photo by Robert Gramner)

Domestic violence housing programs generally want to create safe environments for women leaving abusive relationships. As part of a growing understanding about the needs of survivors, many of these programs in D.C. are reevaluating the rules and restrictions they have in place to accomplish that.

“You’re still being told what you can and cannot do and what’s best for you,” says S., a survivor of domestic violence in her mid-40s. “You’ve been so dictated to for so long, depending how long you’re in your relationship. That model really doesn’t fit—you can’t thrive out of that situation.”

For the past year and a half, S., who asked that we not use her full name to protect her privacy, has lived in apartment-style housing provided by the District Alliance for Safe Housing after leaving her husband of 10 years. That set-up is ideal for S., who had been used to running a household. She thinks living in a communal-style shelter would have made for a much tougher transition.

“Two kids and myself having to share that type of space, I mean, it’s tight now sharing just one room but it’s doable,” she says. “But to share with other residents or survivors, it would have been a lot more difficult for me.”

The apartment-style unit that S. lives in, where she has her own bathroom and kitchen, stands in contrast to shelters, which have shared living spaces. While those facilities can accommodate more people, advocates worry that the rules they enforce may not serve the ultimate goal of empowering survivors of domestic violence.

Regardless of whether they’re communal or apartment-based, many local domestic violence housing programs are moving towards what they’re calling more “survivor-focused” and “trauma-informed” responses.

Peg Hacskaylo, the founder and CEO of DASH, says that communal “shelters developed rules that aren’t what we would consider now to be best practice, but evolved in the interest of trying to maintain a sense of community and mitigate conflict and support safety for everyone living in these programs.”

Having so many traumatized people sharing space could be a “recipe for conflict,” she says.

Curfews, mandatory counseling, barring women from seeing their abusers, no visitors, not providing housing for boys over the age of 12, and requiring women to take turns cooking dinner were just some of the rules developed with the intent of keeping women safe, decreasing tension between residents, and handling limited resources. But they had unintended consequences.

Women could be kicked out for missing non-negotiable curfews or mandatory counseling. Sometimes, women with shared custody or family members had no choice but to see their abusers, which could also lead to expulsion from the shelter. Barring visitors could further alienate women from their support networks at a critical time. Not allowing teen boys meant some women had to choose between safe housing and staying with their kids.

Even the dinner rule was not without issue. “Not everyone wants to cook, not everyone likes to cook, not everyone wants to eat the food that someone else cooked or even can, because of religious or dietary restrictions,” Hacskaylo says.

“When DASH started, we saw that these restrictive rules can work against what it is they’re trying to do—give them back a sense of control over their lives that they didn’t have when they lived in these abusive situations,” says Hacskaylo.

More than a quarter of homeless families and a fifth of homeless individuals in D.C. have experienced domestic violence and 8 percent, or almost 600 people, said that violence directly caused their homelessness, according to a 2017 point-in-time count conducted by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness. The Women’s Task Force of the D.C. Interagency Council on Homelessness puts that number even higher: They report 33 percent of women in D.C. say violence is the cause of their homelessness.

There are four main service providers offering a total of 152 units of domestic violence safe housing in D.C.: DASH, D.C. Safe, House of Ruth, and My Sister’s Place. While other women and families stay in more general shelters, they don’t receive the same trauma-based support system.

DASH has 75 units in D.C., and provides housing for residents for two years. While those who live there can come and go on their own terms, there are some limitations. Abusers are not allowed to visit (though survivors are not prohibited from seeing them off-site). Visiting hours end at 8:30 p.m. and no overnight visitors are permitted. Aside from that, “What we’ve said is pretty much whatever is illegal out there is illegal in here, but you have a lease and you’re expected to abide by the terms of your lease,” says Hacskaylo.

S. says she’s largely found the rules “reasonable … 8:30 p.m. feels like it’s too early sometimes [for visiting hours to end], but it’s extended during the holidays.”

Karma Cottman, the executive director of the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, points out that some communal domestic violence shelters still have challenges serving young men, largely because the older ones only have one shared restroom. “A lot of them are moving to make changes,” says Cottman. “One of the biggest challenges is that most government grant funds don’t allow renovations or construction unless they’re specifically designated.”

Aside from program rules, there are requirements for survivors like providing proof of residence, drug tests, or tuberculosis tests that Hacskaylo says “just aren’t practical for survivors, who don’t always have access to the paperwork that might be expected.”

For S., she says her husband started emotionally and financially abusing her before it became physical. When she described what was going on to a friend, they recommended she go to a domestic violence clinic held at a church in Southwest. “I had to go to that clinic more than one time for it to really sink in,” she says.

Now, she expresses gratitude at having a place with her girls to call her own. “Just knowing that you’re in a safe and secure environment and basically have your own key, it definitely made a difference,” S. says. “You can guide and shape your own independence as you see it, and people aren’t standing over you telling you what to do.”

Hacskaylo says that she’d like to see all housing programs, domestic violence and otherwise, shifted to apartment-style, so “people have privacy and can close the door and know they’re safe and have time to just collect themselves before they have to deal with a lot of demands on their time and their attention. … Unfortunately, it’s just an expensive proposition to set it up that way.”

Advocates are trying to balance the need for more beds and units overall with the desired outcome of empowerment for survivors.

Communal-style shelters can also adopt practices that better support survivors. Cottman says that the “domestic violence field is going through its own evolution” to ask “Is this something that is really survivor-centered? And given the universe that we’re in today, does that really make sense?”

Cottman says the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence and its local partners will travel to Chicago in July for training with the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health. They will look at how their systems can be more rooted in understanding how trauma affects the survivors they encounter.

Even as Hacskaylo is part of the effort to reevaluate these rules, she understands how they came to be. “When you’re working in a domestic violence shelter, one of the scariest things is when a survivor disappears,” Hacskaylo says. “You’re thinking about how to protect those residents that are living in your program, but a lot of the times what happens is you stop working with survivors for them to help keep themselves safe.”

DCist is one of eight D.C.-based news outlets dedicating a portion of our coverage on June 28 to collaborative news coverage about ending homelessness in the nation’s capital. See more at DCHomelessCrisis.Press