Domestic violence, the leading cause of homelessness among women and children, is increasing during the pandemic, but a way for survivors to get “housing first” is a bright light.
While people from all socioeconomic backgrounds experience domestic violence, low-income survivors and immigrant women are especially at risk of becoming homeless due to lack of resources.
In normal times, medical training is challenging and stressful. The amount of time away from loved ones can bring giants to their knees. Add in the fears and uncertainties of a pandemic, I’m amazed that anyone, and any relationships, are surviving.
My heart goes out to the families, such as many of my patients at Harbor-UCLA, who are struggling to make ends meet, while also navigating all of their responsibilities and relationships, during the pandemic.
As our cities have grown, California has made little effort to provide for those who are at, near, or below the poverty level. Many of these residents are also service workers, the backbone of the state’s economy.
Although the lack of affordable housing is central to this increase in homelessness, we must recognize that the solution to ending homelessness is not in the provision of housing alone.
Domestic violence is a learned behavior, and intergenerational trauma has real impacts on youth. To truly stand in solidarity with survivors, we must never lose sight of the hope in preventing violence for generations to come.
In the 2018 Point In Time Count, an annual effort to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January, 10 percent of respondents reported that they were victims of domestic violence.
Californians need to hear these voices, know that there are solutions, and understand that this is not an intractable problem.
A statewide research initiative called Reimagine Lab is deploying strategies from the product design world to identify the root causes of family violence and find new ways to prevent it.
In communities of color, too often the options we have to address violence rely on punishment, police and incarceration. For too many, these options cause additional cycles of trauma and harm, and are not survivor-centered.
Starting in January, a new California law will require all ID badges for students in seventh through 12th grades and in higher education institutions to carry the National Domestic Violence Hotline number, or that of a local domestic violence hotline. One in three teens in the United States is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner, statistics show.
From a young age Alejandra Aguilar understood the links between money and abuse.
A new report from the Prevention Institute, an Oakland-based nonprofit, describes three main ways in which economic security is tied to safe relationships.
The statistics are staggering: 44 percent of lesbian women, 61 percent of bisexual women, 26 percent of gay men, 37 percent of bisexual men and nearly half of transgender people will be raped, attacked or stalked by an intimate partner in their lifetime. We need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act with modest but meaningful improvements that enhance our nation’s response to these heinous crimes.