Housing

The availability of safe and affordable housing is critical for victims of domestic violence trying to obtain safety. Housing is the basic foundation upon which victims escape violent, abusive relationships. It is also an essential element for obtaining and maintaining employment, child custody, economic self-sufficiency, and stability. Without adequate housing for themselves and their children, battered women may view remaining in or returning to an abusive relationship as their only viable option for survival.

While it is true that all people need access to safe and affordable housing, battered women face particular challenges to obtaining this goal. For battered women and their children, the home is often a dangerous place. In addition to the physical violence perpetrated by abusive partners, batterers may prevent victims from accessing or obtaining the financial resources to pay their housing costs. Abusers may keep their partners or ex-partners from working, advancing in their jobs, or attending school. Batterers may also attempt to control victims lives and to limit their options for independence by sabotaging their employment through stalking and harassing them at work, destroying work clothes, threatening co-workers, tampering with vehicles, or eliminating childcare options.

Moreover, abusive partners may create housing barriers by negatively influencing victims credit histories and housing references (Correia & Rubin, 2001). Battered women with additional barriers such as a lack of transportation, unclear immigration status, or substance abuse or mental health issues are further at risk of being unable to access or maintain the limited housing that does exist. Finally, low-income battered women encounter further financial barriers to securing affordable housing. These additional barriers are particularly relevant given the current housing market: the few affordable housing options that do exist give landlords enormous power to refuse to rent to anyone with a housing, employment, or credit history that is less than stellar, effectively screening out battered women based on the effects of domestic violence.

The subject of housing includes many facets: working to create additional housing, ensuring the affordability of existing housing, landlord-tenant law, fair housing/housing discrimination law, public housing policies and priorities, and more.

Detailing the Lack of Affordable, Safe Housing Options for Domestic Violence Victims

Public housing authorities and non-profit facilities are saturated or have disappeared entirely. In essence, few private or public housing options exist, and the options that do exist are often exorbitantly priced or uninhabitable. Rents have risen at a rate far exceeding inflation, now consuming an ever-increasing proportion of a familys income.

Multiple sources indicate that rents have risen at a rate far exceeding inflation (Grundwald, 1999; Menard, 2001). As a result, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has determined that in 46% of states, 54% of all metropolitan areas, and 49% of all local jurisdictions, 40% or more of renters cannot afford the fair market rent for a two bedroom unit (Twonbley, Pitcoff, Dolbeare, and Crowley, 2000). The current housing market has had a particularly harmful effect on single parent households. The NLIHC estimates that nearly 60% of single-parent households rent rather than own their own homes. Forty-four percent of these families are poor (NLIHC, 2000). Eighty-four percent of single-parent households are headed by women (US Census, 1998).

Placing these figures in the context of domestic violence, it is easy to see why housing is of particular concern to battered women and is integrally related to their safety planning and escape strategies. Fifty-six percent of the cities surveyed in 2000 by the U.S. Conference of Mayors identified domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2000). Given these daunting facts, the impetus for battered women to return to abusive partners to avoid pending homelessness is clear.

In this climate of stagnant or slow economic growth and the reduction of public assistance and housing subsidies such as Section 8, lawmakers should be strongly encouraged to promote policies and programs that increase access to safe, affordable, and stable housing. Victims of domestic violence deserve every opportunity to obtain independence and economic self-sufficiency.

Examples of Housing Discrimination Against Domestic Violence in PA

• Our local Housing Authority has a No Trespassers list. Domestic violence victims are "encouraged" to add their batterer against whom they have filed a PFA to this list. In several instances, victims have been evicted as a result of batterers (who are on the list) repeatedly appearing on Housing Authority property. The list has been used against victims; the victims are being held responsible for their batterers behavior. One victim whose batterer repeatedly appeared on Housing Authority property would disappear before the police arrived. Then he would call her from a nearby pay phone and laugh because he knew she would get evicted as a result of his behavior. Her abuser is an ex-cop who is well aware of the list. In the end, she was evicted and he was never caught.
  
• Numerous clients are denied housing because of money owed for damages done to Housing Authority units in which they previously lived. The damages resulted from their partner´s violent behavior. In some cases, clients have obtained a protection order and their abuser was ordered to pay for repairs to the unit. Of course, payments were never made and victims were denied new housing as a result of those debts.
  
• Many clients are routinely denied housing from landlords if they identify themselves as victims of domestic violence or if they admit they are in a shelter. Landlords have made statements that they do not want the "trouble" that would result from renting to domestic violence victims.
  
• A woman disclosed to a landlord that she was receiving services from [a domestic violence service program] shortly after she moved into an apartment. She was more than 30 miles from her abuser and had no contact in more than a year. Within 30 days of moving in, the landlord told her that he couldn´t rent to her because she may be too "needy" because of her need for accessing services through a domestic violence program.

Violence Against Women Act of 2005- Legislative Protections for Domestic Violence Victims

To address the well-known problem of housing discrimination against victims of domestic violence, the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005), signed into law January 5, 2006, included several provisions making such discrimination illegal, and directing public housing authorities to implement certain policies and processes to protect the housing rights of victims.

To implement the changes in VAWA 2005, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued directives to all public housing authorities that they are required to abide by.

• PIH 2007-5 (HA) (Subject: Revised Voucher Housing Assistance Payments Contract (Form HUD 52641) and Tenancy Addendum (form HUD 52641A); Housing Choice Voucher Program Administration and the Violence Against Women and Justice Department Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005)) issued February 16, 2007, states that it transmits a revised Housing Assistance Payments Contract (HAP Contract, form HUD 52641) and a revised Tenancy Addendum (form HUD 52641A). These forms have been revised to reflect the statutory requirements of the Violence Against Women and Justice Department Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005) that are related to housing choice voucher program HAP contracts and leases. These forms are available through http://www.hudclips.org
  This notice further provides guidance to public housing agencies (PHAs) on several additional provisions of the law that impact on voucher program administration.
• PIH 2006-23 (Subject: Implementation of the Violence Against Women and Justice Department Reauthorization Act 2005), issued on June 23, 2006, entitled Implementation of the Violence Against Women and Justice Department Reauthorization Act 2005, states that it informs Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA). Among many other things of significance to PHAs, VAWA prohibits the eviction of, and removal of assistance from, certain persons living in public or Section 8-assisted housing if the asserted grounds for such action is an instance of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking, as those terms are defined in Section 3 of the United States Housing Act of 1937 as amended by VAWA (42 U.S.C. 13925).
• PIH 2006-42 (Subject: Violence Against Women and Justice Department Reauthorization Act 2005 Form HUD-50066 Certification of Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, or Stalking), states that it transmits form HUD - 50066, Certification of Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, or Stalking for use in the Public Housing Program, Housing Choice Voucher Program (including project-based vouchers), Section 8 Project-Based Certificate Program, and Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Program (excluding Mod Rehab SRO), as required by the provisions of Sections 606 and 607 of the Violence Against Women and Justice Department Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA), Public Law 109-162. VAWA provides that Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) and Section 8 owners or managers may request a tenant to certify that the individual is a victim of domestic violence, dating violence or stalking and that the incidence(s) of threatened or actual abuse are bona fide in determining whether the protections afforded to such individuals under VAWA are applicable.
• Form HUD-5006 Certification of Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, or Stalking is the standard form to be used by PHAs administering the Public Housing, Housing Choice Voucher (including project-based vouchers), Section 8 Project-based Certificate, and Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Programs (excluding the McKinney Act Mod Rehab SROs), as well as owners and managers participating in the aforementioned programs.