The Columbus City Council is providing a “lifeline” to the only domestic violence-focused shelter in Franklin County by following through with the second installment of a $1 million donation it announced last fall.
The city’s donation is helping to fill the void of a precipitous drop in federal funding for domestic violence shelters and other support agencies assisting crime victims, said Rachel Lustig, president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services in Columbus, which operates the CHOICES for Victims of Domestic Violence program.
Instances of domestic violence “are happening more and more as our community grows, as we’re experiencing heightened instances of domestic violence, and violence in general,” Lustig told the City Council at a meeting Monday evening. “… CHOICES has tripled in size in the last six years, to keep up with demand, and to provide a trauma-informed and effective solution to people who are fleeing violence.”
Just last week, the “daily census” of people at the shelter, a snapshot of demand on a given day, hit 160, of which about 60% were children, Lustig said.
Lustig told The Dispatch outside the meeting that while its operation has grown substantially, federal funding through the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) has plummeted. The federal funds, which are distributed by states to local agencies that assist crime victims, has been cut from 19% of the shelter’s budget revenue to just 2% of total revenue, she said.
Funding for the total federal victim-service grants is projected to be $700 million lower this fiscal year than in fiscal year 2023 – a 41% decrease, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced in February, citing federal figures. “Without prompt action by Congress, many victim-service programs nationwide may be forced to close,” Yost’s office said, joining a bipartisan group of 40 other state attorneys general that urged the U.S. House and Senate to provide short-term funding to keep programs running.
The VOCA Fund gets its revenues not from tax money but from judgments and settlements in federal criminal court cases. According to the National Criminal Justice Association, those judgments have dropped “due mainly to a steady drop in federal white collar crime prosecutions.” Such white-collar fines peaked in 2011 before steadily plunging to a record low in January 2019, the association said.
“Even if the Biden Justice Department eventually files more white collar crime cases than did the Trump administration did, many prosecutions take years to develop and even longer to produce final convictions or settlements,” the association said in a 2023 statement.
In 2023, Yost’s office said that VOCA funds went to 326 agencies statewide — “domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, child advocacy centers and more” — helping over 321,000 Ohioans.
The Dispatch reported in November 2022 that not only had the number of domestic violence victims in Franklin County being sheltered gone up, but their average stay had increased from 53 days in 2021 to 117 days in 2022, forcing the shelter to convert common areas and offices into living spaces for families. Officials attributed the increased stay to a lack of available affordable housing.
In other words, they have nowhere to go.
The second $500,000 installment approved by City Council on Monday will fund CHOICES through the end of December. After that, the budget becomes uncertain again, Lustig said.
“We are doing everything that we can to sustain this work in our community,” including building capacity to bill Medicaid for services, said Lustig, who took over as president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services a year ago this month. “But there will still be a gap to keep up with this growth.”
In other business Monday, the City Council:
- I made a $75,000 emergency contribution to the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging to support senior housing stabilization efforts, which have spiked due to residents of major apartment complexes suddenly being given vacate notices by their owners. The focus is on keeping older adults out of shelter, as well as prevention, to keep from reaching a housing affordability crisis. The funding supports Columbus residents 50 and older by providing limited rental assistance due to hardship. The agency is assisting older residents in two recent mass-evictions: Peak Property Group’s nine-building complex north of Ohio State University and Sandridge Apartments on the Northeast Side.
- Provided $974,250 in funding for Early Start Columbus, the pre-K initiative that collaborates with Columbus City Schools and community-based preschool providers to allow more children to improve their literacy, language, and math skills.
