Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee 7/16/19

Yeah, I know.

Good afternoon.

Today is Tuesday, July 16th, 2019, and it is 12.05 p.m.

This is a special meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

I'm Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee, and joining me at the table is my co-host and committee member, Council Member Abel Pacheco.

Thank you for joining me, and thank you for the partnership and the collaboration on this joint effort to frame up this conversation today.

So there's a few wonky logistical Robert Rules of Order things that I got to say before we can actually begin the conversation.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

We have one item on today's agenda, and that is to have a conversation with our friends at the Coalition Against Gender-Based Violence, New Beginnings, and the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and the Seattle City Attorney Domestic Violence Unit, and the Seattle Police Department's Victim Support Unit.

to have a conversation on domestic violence services and gaps in the system.

We'll be holding public comment at the end of today's Lunch and Learn for those of you who might have signed up to provide us public comment.

So we'll go ahead and begin with the panel first and then we'll do public comment last.

So I will ask Roxanna to read agenda item one into the record and then I would invite folks from who are here representing those organizations to make your way to the table as she does that.

Agenda item one, domestic violence services and gaps for briefing and discussion.

Great, thank you, Roxanna.

And we have our friends making their way up to the committee table.

And then I just ask that you not sit in this first seat, because that's Roxanna's seat.

But otherwise, any seat you'd like.

And then we do have a PowerPoint presentation, yes?

So Roxanna will help with making sure that is fired up for us.

And then somebody will need to sit close to that computer to drive.

Great.

Okay, and for those of you who haven't joined us at the table before, you'll need to speak directly into the microphone.

Oftentimes you have to get it uncomfortably close to your mouth.

But that's, they're sensitive, but not so sensitive enough that you can be far away from them.

There's also a little button on the stem that's gray, and that's how you turn the microphone on or off.

in order for it to be on, the button should be green.

So just make sure it's, the little light is green if it's not.

So we will go ahead and start with a round of introductions and then perhaps Council Member Pacheco and I can make some introductory remarks around sort of what we hope to be able to frame up and accomplish with today's conversation.

And then we'll kick it over to you all to lead us through the presentation.

So let's go with introductions first.

So name and organization that you're here representing.

I'm Catherine Rideau.

I'm a prosecutor with the city of Seattle in the Domestic Violence Unit.

Welcome.

I'm Rosa Mullen.

I'm a victim advocate for the city attorney's office.

Beryl Cousin with the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence here in Seattle King County.

I'm Susan Siegel with New Beginnings.

Judy Chen, Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

I'm Dana Lockhart.

I manage the victim support team program with the Seattle Police Department.

Great.

Well, thank you all so much for being here.

So one of the central areas that my committee focuses on are issues related to gender equity as part of as part and also the intersection of public safety.

And so one of the things that I have the pleasure of doing is serving on the Domestic Violence Prevention Council with some of you, in fact, and we have an opportunity in that room to talk both about the work that the city and the region is doing together to prevent domestic violence and to support the resilience and the recovery of those individuals who may experience domestic violence.

We also talk a lot about issues related to sexual assault in the same sort of vein, but today we wanted to really focus on the issues around domestic violence and how the system is or isn't working for survivors or current victims of domestic violence and what the city council in particular could do to better support organizations like yours that really do a fantastic job of working with internal agencies like the Seattle Police Department and the city attorney's office on really accomplishing the work of investing in and ensuring the recovery of victims and survivors of domestic violence.

And really appreciated an opportunity to have a conversation with Councilmember Pacheco early on around his interest in this space as well.

And really happy that we were able to partner together on an opportunity to host this conversation and to hear directly from you all about what we're doing well and what we could do more of.

And of course, this is all in anticipation of what will be the budget process that kicks off at the end of September.

And we always, I have always prioritized making additional investments or protecting prior investments in this space and wanted to be a little bit more proactive about those efforts this time around.

So Council Member Pacheco, is there anything you'd like to add?

It's like I did I did I did the thing where I caught you Just I just thank you all for being here and thank Councilmember Gonzalez just for starting this discussion So I'm hoping to be as as she said In preparation for the budget what we can do to support but also we'll see what we can make in terms of additional investments And so thank you All right, who wants to lead us off?

Good afternoon.

My name is Judy Chen.

I'm with the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

And I think there are slides.

Yes.

I have the pleasure of being the acting executive director of a statewide coalition.

We have over 70 member programs around the state serving all 39 counties and several tribes.

of our 70-plus member programs, actually only 42 are now what we think of as traditional domestic violence shelter-based programs that have state contracts.

The balance are community-based programs and remote rural communities, tribes, and culturally specific communities, and actually a full third are culturally specific or tribal.

and we have a slight rural majority of amazing people doing amazing work.

So in this photo you can see just some of the amazing work that people are doing, not just domestic violence emergency services, but also working for fair wages.

You can see there's a, that's a totem pole that was carved out at the Quileute Reservation by men and other people in the community working to heal from intergenerational violence.

Next please.

We're moving nationally from being reactive to domestic violence and the crisis of violence to moving upstream so that all people can live and live freely without fear.

To do that, we are really rooting in cornerstones of race equity, economic justice, and gender and reproductive liberation.

And I'm very excited to be looking at new pathways around, for example, rethinking criminal legal solutions to violence so that there are more options for families and communities, especially in communities of color.

The coalition is the leading voice, blah, blah, blah.

We have kind of three buckets around supporting our members, engaging the public, and doing visionary work.

And around engaging the public, I want to thank the council for your work on economic justice, and just am so excited.

Next slide, please.

about what are now statewide rights that survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking have to not be fired from their job because of their victimization or for seeking help, for example.

We have a new guide for families and friends.

We know from domestic violence fatality data and doing almost two decades of reviewing domestic violence homicides and murder-suicides that survivors go, to their friends and family way more than they go to any other resources in the community.

So reaching families and friends on what to do, both for people who are struggling with surviving abuse and people who are struggling with hurting someone else.

People need to know how to intervene because domestic violence is 100% preventable.

That's our message, it's 100% preventable.

We look forward to seeing many of you at the Refused Abuse 5K at T-Mobile Park, Mariners, this Saturday.

And we're also excited about the work that we've been doing statewide with the Refused Abuse Program and our prevention work to reach people, young people in all 39 counties of the state with evidence-based and promising practices around prevention.

Next slide, please.

Supporting our member programs is our other bucket.

And what I want to call your attention to mainly is the mobile advocacy work that is a promising practice.

We're gathering evidence that I'll talk about in a little bit through a research study, and just so pleased that the city of Seattle has been a leader in supporting mobile advocacy to reach survivors so that, so, you know, just what we know is that when somebody is, surviving abuse that traditionally people have to go to an office across town with their kids on the bus, may not have the bus money, you get there, and you're telling a stranger about the most intimate and often embarrassing details of your life and what you've been dealing with.

And for many people, being able to go someplace is important, but for so many people, having someone come to where they are, especially if they don't have a car, they have to stay home with their kids, or they work the night shift.

It's just so difficult to get to a domestic violence social service agency and having someone come to them or meet them at a McDonald's and their kids can play or, you know, whatever it is, to be able to talk about what's going on and get help, that that is a promising practice that reaches so many more people, especially people who don't speak English or have other barriers such as disabilities.

Next slide, please.

And then, our third bucket is around visionary leadership and really recognizing that domestic violence, to end domestic violence, we need to have good jobs.

People need to have good jobs where they can earn living wages and have safe time off of work so that they can go and get help.

That there are people who are working in the fields, picking the apples and all the fruits that are on our gracer tables, that they deserve help, too.

And that for survivors and victims like Charlene Lyles, who was killed in a police interaction in Seattle a few years ago, that surviving violence and having many complex issues in their lives, that those are folks who need help and need help that makes sense for them and their families.

Next slide, please.

So, hey, this is the last one.

So one of the questions that we often get is, what will reduce violence and repair the harm and the trauma that families experience from people who use abusive behaviors?

One of the things we know, you can see this image of, this was a snapshot of domestic violence, homicides, and murder-suicides in Washington State.

One of the things we know from many years of gathering this data is that perpetrators use guns more often than any other weapon combined, and that what we've seen in other states is that when People who are dangerous abusers have those weapons removed that there is a reduction in domestic violence fatality.

Domestic violence, harm from domestic violence abusers is one of the leading causes of death for women in the U.S. from someone that they know.

We know that we need to expand community accountability and have it not just be that the survivor is accountable for ending the violence, but the whole community is a part of that.

We know that safe and affordable housing is one of the number one issues facing survivors, and it's one of the leading causes of homelessness for women and children in the United States.

We know that survivors often say, for those who are able to leave an abusive relationship, what survivors have told us and focus groups is that one of the main reasons that they have to return is because they can't afford health insurance, they can't afford rent, they can't afford to not live with that abusive person.

So living wages and employment rights are key.

In terms of needs that the city council might consider, reliable, non-competitive funding that focuses on best and promising practices, including mobile advocacy and flexible financial assistance.

So, for example, to be able to stay in your own apartment.

But those are promising practices that should be, continue to be encouraged.

And we're actually, I have some handouts for the council and for participants today about what is domestic balance housing first.

But what we know is that oftentimes people can stay in their own place with not a lot of investment compared to what it costs to keep people in 24-7 shelter.

So sometimes, you know, it's always sad to hear, to have a survivor call and say, I know I'm going to be evicted because I can't afford the rent or I had a big debt come up that I need to pay off, and so I'm calling ahead to see if you know of any shelters where I could go.

And you know, what happens to people once they have an eviction on their rental record or their credit, right?

It's very hard to keep your family stable.

So we're super excited about the results of this, of the preliminary evaluation, actually, I shouldn't say preliminary, many years of evaluation that we've done, including that 96% of survivors were able to retain housing after 18 months.

So we're working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the feds to do a longitudinal study and the results from that study will be complete in 2021. But we'd be happy to come back or share with your offices at another time.

We'll have some short-term housing outcome results in December as well as some data on the impact of the flexible financial assistance.

That would be great to be able to get a preview of some of those options.

I know that not only statewide and nationally, one of the leading causes of women and children entering into A state of experiencing homelessness is domestic violence, and Seattle is not an outlier, unfortunately, in terms of that statistic.

It is also true that a large portion of women and children facing and experiencing homelessness in our own city and in the county can say the same thing.

Many of them have reported experiencing violence in the home, either a youth who has experienced violence at home or partner-on-partner domestic violence.

So I think it's really important for us to get a really clear understanding of how that impacts housing stability for individuals who are unfortunately trying to break this cycle of violence and needing all of the support they need to be able to do that.

And I'm not sure if you're all aware of this or not, but Council Member Herbold is leading a conversation around some potential legislation at the City of Seattle to further extend some protections to victims of domestic violence in the area of eviction.

So really important conversation.

And I believe she just kicked off that conversation in her committee last week.

and I believe it's in her committee, but we'll make sure to share some additional information with you all to make sure that she has the benefit of this wonderful information about particular promising practices in the Housing First model that is unique to individuals who are either at risk of experiencing domestic violence or who are actively experiencing domestic violence or recovering.

So I wanted to make sure that that was on your all's collective radar that there is an effort at the city to really tackle this really this eviction complexity related to people experiencing domestic violence.

Well, we're quite excited about what we hear from survivors around how this has increased their safety and reduced further victimization in the data, so we'll be glad to engage more in that.

I thought the council might be particularly interested in the impact for refugee and immigrant survivors who were 20 percent, 22 percent of the participants in our previous study, and I did not print out the 134-page report, but it is online.

Lastly, you know, two further points and then I'll yield to, or turn to my colleagues, is that lack of capacity for meeting basic human needs for survivors and their children continues to be a huge problem statewide.

The turnaway rates, you know, are tremendous in our state.

And we also know that building more and more and more shelter isn't the answer.

There will never be enough emergency shelter for the need if we are meeting people after they have all of the violence has increased dramatically and all of their resources have gone down.

They have no money left.

no friends or family who they're connected with because we know isolation is the first thing to kick in.

And that is, if we are seeing people at that point, their needs are tremendous and it's so hard to fulfill those needs.

When we go upstream and help people before they've been evicted, before the violence has peaked, before their children have experienced tremendous trauma.

That's the promise of what we could do and those kinds of investments in prevention and earlier interventions make a huge difference.

And lastly, rethinking criminal legal solutions to violence is something that we're beginning to engage a lot more with our colleagues around the state and the criminal legal system as well as in communities, knowing that for so many people, that needs to be an option and all of us as citizens and residents have the right to access criminal legal, the criminal legal system to protect ourselves, but there needs to be something else on the menu besides that.

There need to be other options, so really looking at housing, living wages, economic options, opportunity for all families.

Thank you.

I appreciate that highlight, that last point, because I know that there has been a lot of conversation within this community about, you know, the viability of, in that criminal legal system conversation, how do we, you know, if the conversation has been historically focused on victims and victims only, are we leaving sort of other creative, innovative options on the table that could fall into the rubric of preventative measures that we could take into place to prevent the violence from occurring in the first place, which is really what I think the interest and the goal ultimately is, as opposed to having the blunt instrument of, you know, punitively penalizing people who might actually be susceptible and amenable to some other type of intervention that is not quite as a blunt instrument.

Not saying that that is the answer to every single situation, but certainly, you know, appreciate the spirit of having conversations that lend themselves to a more holistic approach to be able to really pivot and turn the tide on these issues.

If I could address that point very briefly, because I know my time is probably up.

I think one of the lenses that I try to look at it with is, of course we want people who are causing harm through criminal activity to be accountable.

And we know that there's, it's a very complex issue.

And that for so many survivors, so I want that accountability.

And for many survivors, they can't access that system safely.

So what about them?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Excellent point.

Council Member Pacheco, anything before we move to the next organization?

Okay, great.

Meryl, you're going to kick off next.

So I think I'm up next.

So again, my name is Meryl Cousin, and I have the honor of serving as the Director of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

We used to be the King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and we expanded our mission to include sexual assault and abuse and other forms of gender-based violence in our mission.

So we are a parallel sister agency to the state.

and our state sexual assault coalition working at the regional, so Seattle, King County level on these issues.

And this is just a list of, this isn't even all of our members.

These are our member programs that provide some kind of services to survivors of gender-based violence.

So survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking, and also anti-LGBTQ violence.

like the state coalition.

And many of these organizations are also members of the state coalition.

And so we definitely work in partnership.

And a lot of what the state coalition does is sort of set the broader, or the state coalition set the sort of broader vision and statewide agenda.

And then we work with our members here in Seattle King County to support their implementation.

So everything that Judy said about sort of the roots and sort of how we approach this work is being rooted in our racial, economic, gender, and social justice I think would hold for us.

And like the state coalition, we do not provide direct services ourselves.

We work with our member programs to support them to do the work of supporting individual survivors and their families.

So our mission is to end gender-based violence and promote equitable relationships through collective action for social change.

And like the state coalition, we identify several buckets of how our work fits.

And we do that by leading policy efforts at the city and county level, by connecting our members with each other to share resources, coordinate services, set common agendas around local policy issues, and also to connect our members to the other human services organizations and other organizations working for immigrant justice, racial and economic justice.

And then finally, we also work to build the capacity of our member programs and other professionals and folks in communities who come into contact with survivors and their families.

Some particular areas of focus that we have had some dedicated staff time working on revolve around issues related to family law, the intersection of behavioral health and gender-based violence, Housing and homelessness is our newest.

We've always been involved in that work and we just today actually our new housing service systems coordinator just started.

We got funded through HUD actually to do that work.

So we'll definitely be connecting with the work that the council wants to be doing on that.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

And we've actually been having some focused conversations among our members around transformative justice.

alternatives to incarceration and engaging communities in more proactively responding to and preventing gender-based violence and raising up the work of the organizations that are doing that.

And so next so we hear all the time from our members and a few years ago we did focus groups from of survivors and you know it's what you all know and sort of echoing what Julie said is just Judy sorry.

I've only known you for what 27 years.

We are so lucky in this community to have so many organizations that are providing just a whole host of services, many of them rooted in specific racial, ethnic, and cultural communities, others serving specific geographic areas.

And it means there really are a lot of options out there for survivors, and everyone is stretched beyond capacity.

So definitely, I mean, thanks largely, you know, significantly to your work, we have expanded the level of services that are available, particularly focused around the survivor-driven mobile flexible advocacy, and there's still more that's needed.

And basically the range of housing options is sort of one of the number one things we hear from survivors.

Legal advocacy and representation.

Especially, not so much, not as much around the criminal legal system as we hear about it related to family law and immigration issues.

That's where survivors are really being impacted for the long term.

Are those issues related to divorce proceedings, or can you tell us a little bit more about the particulars of the complexities?

Yeah, so mostly family loss, so mostly divorce or dissolution, custody, people who have abused their partners, the majority of contested custody cases.

involved domestic violence and oftentimes it may be the first time that the violence is disclosed is in a divorce proceeding because it's the first time that it's been safe to talk about that.

So there is not necessarily a lot of other evidence and there's a lot of focus in our family court on cooperation between parents and so So some of the, I think, orientations of the court that may be there for very good reasons, like when domestic violence is happening.

and not understanding the trauma that the survivor is often experienced, it can really work against survivors.

And we're really seeing survivors struggle in that system.

We're also seeing people who are abusive becoming really adept at using the system to further their abuse.

And so basically it's a tactic of control to keep the proceedings going if the survivor has resources.

I mean, we have seen folks literally, I mean, again, hearing about it through our member programs, spending tens of thousands of dollars over years and years trying to protect their kids in the court system and constantly being pulled back in.

So there's a whole bunch of work there.

And then, of course, the immigration issues, there's just not nearly enough, and then the whole system is so backlogged.

And so in the immigration context, is that focus, is that primarily around the being able to achieve relief under Violence Against Women's Act or are there other components that are being triggered?

If there's any kind of custody issue that also involves, you know, international an international relationship or something like that, there's a lot that comes up and the confluence of immigration status and family law when they're splitting up.

So yeah, but a lot of it is the U visa status or even like trying to figure out is there any kind of relief that some survivors can get even if they don't have status and some of those kinds of things.

I think, I don't know if you have.

I don't have anything to add to that.

She's giving you the thumbs up.

You have given a comprehensive response.

You know, I just wanted to flag here that in the space of investing in additional legal services, I've been a really huge advocate and pretty dogged about my perspective on this one, that I think we need to be investing much more in legal representation of, you know, to provide people meaningful access to appropriate and quality legal representation.

It's, you know, part of, so I've done that in a couple ways.

One is through the establishment of the Legal Defense Network that's primarily focused on providing free legal services in the area of immigration, specifically to individuals who are at risk of deportation.

or who are actively in deportation proceedings.

One of the things that we discovered in that space as sort of a takeaway lesson was how many individuals were coming to participate in the program under the UVISA program that really needed to have mental health services as well.

And so one of the things that we have done to modify the program a little bit is to make sure that we're a little bit more flexible around connecting the dots of, you know, when you are applying for a U visa, you need somebody to be able to vouch for the fact that there has been harm caused to you and that somebody tends to be a licensed therapist or a counselor or somebody else who is actively providing you therapy.

And so setting aside sort of the legal requirements and those check boxes that you have to go through, there's the actual basic need of mental health services for individuals who've been severely traumatized as a result of violence that they've been subjected to.

And so I just wanted to flag that for you all as something that we know needs to be further developed in that space.

And there's also, you know, the investments we've been making around protection orders and other issues for organizations like the Sexual Assault Law Center to be able to represent individuals who are going through that process and continue to connect them with much-needed services.

And I recognize that it's sort of dimes in a bucket that, you know, we need a lot more to go into this space given the amount of need.

And I'm really interested in continuing to make sure that we're prioritizing the legal advocacy and representation aspects for survivors.

I also think there's systems reform that needs to happen because you shouldn't have to spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a divorce.

And there is, it's a whole other conversation and it's actually more at the county level and the state level I think is where most of the remedies are going to come and less at the city level.

But there's all kinds of professionals being pulled into these.

cases, a lot of these family law cases that, yeah, a whole other conversation.

We'll bookmark that for later.

Yeah, happy to have a follow-up off-the-record conversation with you.

The other thing that we are actively doing right now at the city is beginning the process of formulating our state and federal lobbying agendas.

And so I think there's an opportunity for us to, we always prioritize this category in general.

But if there is a specific bill or legislative fix that could benefit from having the City of Seattle weigh in on and dedicate some of our lobbying resources to, that is certainly something that we would be happy to do and that we have historically done in many of these spaces.

So happy to hear a little bit more about that as we gear up for conversations with our Office of Intergovernmental Relations around crafting those specific proposals.

And we'll work with the state folks too, because they really take the lead on state.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Great.

So I don't have to go through everything else.

I think Judy framed it really well.

I mean, the bottom line is we absolutely know that survivors really, really benefit from trauma-informed domestic violence advocacy and support services.

We also do have now, thanks to the county's some funding from the county's Mental Illness and Drug Dependency Fund.

We have some mental health therapists based at several domestic violence programs, which is a new thing.

And then our position that focuses on, you know, making sure that both folks in the mental behavioral health field know how to respond to survivors, identify domestic violence and respond to survivors and that folks in The advocacy field, the survivor advocacy fields are better prepared to handle mental health crises and needs of the survivors they work with.

But the bottom line is if people can't feed their kids, if they can't afford rent, if they can't get a living wage, it's really hard to have any, you know, any success with these other things.

So both and, not either or.

And we are also trying to work.

I think this community leads sort of the nation in terms of some of the really innovative culturally specific services and prevention programs that have been started here.

Some have become national models and we are always looking to talk about community engagement.

transformative justice prevention and move our interventions further upstream, including true violence prevention and changing community norms.

At the same time, we need to address the real needs and suffering of folks who are currently being impacted.

And I think for individual agencies, that can be a struggle is how do you do some of both because the needs are so great.

So moving on, I think that like the state coalition, we are looking at beyond the criminal legal system.

And so certainly we want the criminal legal system to be responsive in the way that it's supposed to be and accountable.

And we don't think it's contradictory to both be like supporting police accountability and responding appropriately to domestic violence and sexual assault cases throughout that system.

But really at the local policy options, Seattle has already taken the lead as Judy bookmarked on a couple of things like the Safe, Sick, and The Seattle sick and safe time.

How many S words can be in that sentence?

Yeah, it's a mouthful.

Yeah, and some of the anti-discrimination protections and things like that.

Health, housing, and human services policies, including policies that say that human services contracts should rise with inflation.

So thank you very much for that yesterday.

That was a great result.

Thank you all for your advocacy around that.

Thank you for your leadership.

You know, a lot, I think, certainly policy related to affordable housing and homelessness, and like one of the things that I kind of talk about is DV competency, that like there is so much intersection between domestic violence and housing, homelessness issues between domestic violence and mental health and substance abuse issues and, you know, children's issues that folks in all professionals have to have a certain level of understanding of how to recognize domestic violence and how to respond within their roles.

They're not all expected to be domestic violence advocates, but their responses within their roles.

And that's not necessarily something you get in social work school or you get in law school or you get in, you know, mental health programs or things like that.

And I also think that, you know, the city council has a role in terms of raising awareness and visibility of the issue.

Because unlike the way, you know, chronic homelessness shows up with folks living on the streets, it's not domestic violence, sexual assault, other forms of gender-based violence aren't necessarily as in our faces.

And so it really takes bringing it up and raising visibility.

The other thing that locally there has been a lot of leadership on here and at the county has been around firearms and domestic violence and getting guns out of the hands of people who are abusive.

And we've been working with the city attorney's office and SPD around those issues, around issues of survivors who have been arrested and criminalized.

because many survivors are often, are arrested actually for domestic violence or for other crimes that are directly related to the violence that they're experiencing.

And then so many also find themselves criminalized in the act of trying to survive.

And so really trying to up our ability to support survivors who have been criminalized And we have been working with the DVPC's Criminal Justice Committee around like a model intervention program for people who have been abusive and around these issues.

So there's a lot of great.

collaboration there.

And finally, I'll just say in terms of funding priorities, and I think we've talked to you about this before, but our number one funding priority for 2020 on top of no cuts to human services and the inflation ordinance, the inflation adjustment, is to, around domestic violence, is a central regional domestic violence helpline.

This is the culmination of more than two years of planning in the community for many, many reasons, including the specific dangers that survivors face, the fact that there is more reluctance, particularly on the part of immigrant and refugee survivors, other marginalized folks to approach formal systems.

And because of the lack of capacity, frankly, to meet the needs of every survivor with in-person, live advocacy, let alone housing or legal representation, that a helpline is the entry point for many survivors, and for some survivors, it may be the only kind of domestic violence service that they can access.

And there is not currently a dedicated 24-hour central helpline or hotline for survivors of domestic violence in this region.

There are several agencies that are mandated to staff their phones 24 hours, but they're not funded.

So frankly, I mean, they do the best they can given the circumstances, but it's usually people, you know, I think it's a combination of volunteers, folks who are on call, and folks who are doing this as part of their other job.

Many calls go unanswered.

you many survivors get really great trauma-informed helpful responses and many don't and many get a busy signal or voicemail and it's right now frankly it's a crapshoot and so we did a multi-year multi-agency planning process for what it would take to actually implement a dedicated 24-hour well-staffed crisis or helpline here in Seattle King County.

And we have almost like three quarters of the funding secured largely through the county's Vets, Seniors, and Human Services levy.

They dedicated a big portion of that.

We have about 350,000 more that we need to identify by early 2020. in order for it to really be feasible to implement.

And given the number of programs and survivors that are in Seattle, and I think it would be, I think it's a reasonable recommendation to the council.

It was recommended by the human services staff for the mayor's budget.

And we're, you know, we've certainly communicated this to her And also want to just call out that it's not only a resource for survivors, it's a resource for first responders.

Currently I think law enforcement, you know, they're required to give information and there's a list of, like that list of our members, there's a list of like 20 agencies and then survivors don't know who to call and they end up having to call multiple ones because of capacity.

This would give them a trauma-informed response, someone who could spend an hour safety planning with them if that's what's needed, who, if they're having an emotional crisis, can talk to them.

And we also wanna integrate a chat function, and it will increase access.

And we did some focus groups.

I won't read this to you, but this just shows some of what the difference is between someone getting a great response from a helpline and somebody getting a busy signal or a So, you know, someone saying, you know, we don't have shelter now, you have to call somebody else and getting off the phone quickly because there's three other lines ringing.

So, that's our plug.

And I know I took more than my time.

So, sorry.

That's okay.

Council Member Pacheco has a question.

A really brief question.

Are there other regions across the country that have a hotline like this, a service line?

Yeah, there are a number of statewide hotlines, and we actually consulted with a couple of them.

Many states don't have as many programs as we do here in King County.

And there used to be a state domestic violence hotline here in Washington State, and for a number of reasons, including I mean, it was just, I think, complicated to run, and most calls really were coming in through the day, and so, you know, it was deprioritized and doesn't exist anymore, although the number, unfortunately, is still out there in a lot of ways.

So given the number of programs that we have here, the level of complexity, and frankly, I think the complexity of, like, the housing homelessness system and the mental health system here, It really felt like we needed a dedicated line locally where people would really know and be able to stay on top of how the...

coordinated entry for homelessness.

It changed again, I think last week.

So it really would be a way to help folks navigate the other services that they need in a really, really informed way and tell people what they can and can't expect.

I do think there are some other county level hotlines out there.

I know that Portland, Multnomah County had a crisis line, I'm not sure if that's still going.

Do you know of any others?

And then there's also some state helplines.

So, yeah.

Any other questions?

Council Member Pacheco?

Okay.

Well, thank you, Meryl, for that information and that presentation.

I know that you and I have had conversations about the hotline in the past.

And I think with the knowledge now that King County has also invested in the program, it makes a lot of sense for us at the City of Seattle to take a hard look at what resources we could contribute knowing that we have the need as well.

And even though there are statewide organizations that I think do provide some level of a hotline, It is important to make sure that the organizations that we are referring folks to are from the communities that people are living within, which is, you know, I think that geographic component I think is super important.

I've heard some really compelling stories.

from folks about how a hotline made a difference for them in their experience and being able to do that safety planning and move on to healing.

I've also heard stories about how badly it can go.

And so I think it's really important as this concept continues to be implemented to obviously make sure that it's a model that is really going to be truly responsive to the unique and local needs of the individuals who are calling.

And I like the point that you made around the first responders in particular.

I think officers oftentimes want to be able to connect people to the right place in person, and it does feel a little frustrating that you have to hand out sort of a, here's a directory of every single non-profit agency I can think of that's in King County that might be able to help you.

Good luck, right?

That is not a meaningful resource.

It's a resource, but it does shift the burden to the domestic violence victim in a way that I think is really unfair to that person.

And we have been focused on really looking at language access and how we make it accessible in terms of language as well as, you know, cultural appropriateness and things like that.

And it really is a community effort.

And it is going to take all of our community partners to, you know, be working with the helpline staff to make sure that they know what the folks that they're seeing in their communities need.

Dana, did you want to chime in?

I just knew, I was also going to put in a pitch for this as well, but it looks like I probably won't have time.

But I did want to also just say that this does help fulfill the requirements of the WAC.

As the WAC is written around mandatory arrest now, law enforcement is required to offer the state hotline.

The state hotline is no longer in service.

And so this would help to kind of make sure that we're getting up to the requirements of the WAC.

Great point, great point.

Okay, let's move along.

I notice that we're running really short of time, so it would be helpful to know, because there's several of us that haven't spoken yet, so what could you suggest to us about?

Yeah, how much time do you got left here?

I think we can, and I don't think the chambers are reserved for anything else, so I think we've probably got, I think we can go until about 1215-ish, maybe a little bit longer, but I think we're safe.

Okay.

Until somebody comes in here and tells me otherwise.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

I'm Susan Siegel, Executive Director of New Beginnings.

And New Beginnings was founded as a grassroots effort in 1976 to address a documented need to provide safe haven for women and children fleeing abuse.

And what began as a small communal shelter 43 years ago has evolved into a multi-service agency, which includes a 24-hour helpline, individual and group support, children's services, homelessness prevention, short-term bridge housing with a rapid rehousing component, legal advocacy, therapy, community education and training, as well as prevention education for youth.

New Beginnings also coordinates three clinics for survivors really throughout King County, a DV family law clinic, a DV protection order clinic, and a technology-enabled coercive control clinic.

We're also a proud participant in the latest iteration of the DV Housing First demonstration project and the longitudinal research that Judy spoke to and that will be available in 2021. In 2018, we answered close to 5,500 crisis calls on our 24-hour helpline.

We provided in-person support to 525 adults and 174 children.

80% of the survivors that we served were low-income, and 50% were people of color.

And we also touched 3,200 adults and youth through our community education and prevention efforts.

If we can go to the next slide.

What follows will echo quite a bit of what Judy and Merle spoke to, so I think I'm not, you know, in the interest of enabling other folks to speak, I'm not going to go over all of these points again.

other than to say that, or to remind us that domestic violence remains a hidden epidemic in our community.

And two of the best things that we can do are really within our reach as a community.

One is to use an unfortunate military phrase, we need more boots on the ground in terms of advocates and educators that are reaching out far into the community.

to educate about domestic violence, to talk about services that are available, to ensure that community members have the knowledge and skills to support survivors.

And we need that countywide helpline.

One of the things that Merrill really described it in very eloquently.

So the only thing that I will add to that though is that in the planning for that helpline, we have always conceived that it would have a strong, assuming that we're able to obtain the full budget that we need, that it would have a strong kind of promotional component to it so that we'd really be able to lift this up as a high profile resource for survivors both through broad outreach in the community as well as more culturally specific community outreach as well.

So this is not only an incredibly essential service, but it also could present us with a mechanism for reaching a much broader swath of the community and to make them aware of the kinds of supports and services that are available.

So moving the dial, I think that my colleagues have touched on a lot of these kinds of things.

Some of these represent obviously broader cultural change that we all need to be a part of and city council can do a lot in the way of talking up these issues and modeling this kind of action.

We really need, as Judy and Merle both said, to aim as much of our efforts as far upstream as we possibly can do, and it really is going to involve the full village of our community to do that.

So I'm going to cut it shorter than I would have just so that other folks have a chance to speak.

Thank you, Susan.

I really appreciate all the work that you all have been doing.

I know that you've been good partners to the city and to others in doing this work and have had the pleasure of hearing you speak at the DVPC meetings on really important issues.

I think the last one that we heard from you all about is around the technology components, which was fascinating.

terrifying, but fascinating in terms of the emerging area of work that is happening in this space around how technology, while it can be a wonderful, helpful tool to create efficiencies in many other areas of our lives, it is really being weaponized in this space of domestic violence.

hearing some of the innovative work that you all are doing was really inspiring and promising in terms of figuring out how do we really think about these tools that many of us around this table use on a daily basis without even blinking or batting an eye at.

and thinking about how those same tools are used to just terrorize people.

And of course, that means that the population of people who are causing harm is becoming younger and younger and younger.

And so I thought we learned a ton from that conversation, including how youngsters think about bullying and how it's not really They don't use that word, really.

What was it?

Drama.

They use the term drama.

Yeah, there's a lot, there's not a lot of bullying, but there's a lot of drama.

A lot of drama.

A lot of drama.

And I think us old folks use that term as well, but perhaps in a different way.

So thank you so much for being with us and for the work that you do as well.

And just a very quick thank you also for the annual inflation adjustment legislation.

That is critical.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

We're happy to do it.

Now we just got to make sure it gets into the budget.

All right, let's hear from the good folks over at SPD now.

Hi there, I'm here to tell you about the Victim Support Team.

So the VST program provides a victim-centered, trauma-informed, collaborative response that meets the emergency needs for survivors following a traumatic event.

VST was designed to address the gaps in services that occur on the weekends when domestic violence calls are happening the most frequently and when community programs are hardest to access.

On the weekends, these volunteer teams are called to respond to crime scenes at officers' requests.

The presence of these community volunteers help break the cycle of violence and allow survivors to feel supported by their community as well as by the Seattle Police Department.

During the week, we have a follow-up advocate.

She responds to incoming calls from survivors and from community advocates to answer questions about ongoing cases, about court order service, firearm seizure and surrender, and other criminal justice system information.

The VST program is part of the Domestic Violence Unit, which is part of the Seattle Police Department, and has been part of SPD's response to domestic violence since 1996. Last year, VST program received over 1,200 referrals.

In addition, the VST staff responded to over 50 requests from the community for training, outreach, system improvement, and gender-based violence prevention efforts.

And currently, our VST program has over 60 community volunteers, many of whom have been with us for about five years or more.

And I start with this statistic I think is really important.

It's a cornerstone of how we approach our interventions and also how I train patrol officers to utilize our program.

I need them to know that we will never respond to a traumatic event or a violent event with urgency or pressure for the survivor to make drastic changes in their life that they're not ready for.

Rarely does the moment of crisis and heightened violence also correlate with the exact moment when a survivor has all the tools and resources and information they need to act on that plan to keep them safe.

So we're planting seeds, we're providing critical information, and most importantly, we're connecting them to the long-term community support and advocacy from programs like Susan's and other programs that are member organizations with the coalition.

So the domestic violence calls that the victim support team respond to are not only person-to-person intimate partner violence.

SPD officers are responding to multiple forms of coercive control and gender-based violence.

Many of them are overlapping.

For survivors of intimate partner violence, the VST program can help to identify safe housing options.

We can walk someone through what the process is to obtain the domestic violence protection order if that's what they choose is safest to do.

We can provide transportation assistance.

We have taxi vouchers and now we have a contract with a ride share company as well.

We have 165 community resource brochures in 18 different languages.

That takes a lot of time to navigate through.

Seattle has a lot of resources, but it's very complicated and it's a hard process to figure out what is going to be the most appropriate for that person.

We also have a lot of several, we have several emergency resources such as food, clothing, baby needs, and cell phones.

For people who are experiencing stalking, we can provide tools and strategies to help document future incidents and information about anti-harassment and stalking orders.

We are also frequently engaging with tech or cyber abuse, and we do call this technology-enabled coercive control, or TEC.

So if you see it written like that, I didn't spell TEC wrong.

In these situations, VST can provide tech-specific safety planning strategies that include identifying potential compromises in their devices and resources to help document online harassment and impersonation.

VST also supports survivors of sexual assault by offering transportation to a sexual assault nursing exam, and we also accompany when a victim is reporting to law enforcement their assault.

We support children who are abused by waiting with the kiddos for CPS at the precincts.

And a lot of people don't know, kids are oftentimes waiting at these precincts for CPS to arrive for over four hours.

VST is available to assist with officers to help reduce the traumatic impact of that experience for children.

For families impacted by adolescent family violence, we can provide resources for parents and other family members, and we can also offer safety planning that involves alternatives to youth incarceration in partnership with Step Up and FERS.

And when working with victims of elder and vulnerable adult abuse, we can connect the survivor and supportive family members with the SPD Elder Abuse Advocate and Seattle Senior Services.

So I have lots of recommendations, but we don't have much time.

So I'll start personal here is that we're asking for ongoing operational budget for the victim support team program.

Currently, SPD's budget supports the three full-time position, myself included.

All other costs associated with the victim assistance and volunteer training are not in our current budget.

The Seattle Police Foundation acts as a fiscal sponsor for my program and helps to raise the roughly $20,000 necessary for annual operation costs and victim service delivery.

So we will be asking for support to encourage SPD to pay for the volunteer training and retention expenses as well as the necessary victim services.

Also specific to SPD, we're asking for additional advocacy staff for the Seattle Police Department.

The domestic violence unit currently only staffs two felony advocates, each of them last year with a caseload of 450 people.

Their workload continues to expand, and the structure of the program that was designed in, like, the early 90s, I believe, was designed at a time when the population of the city was nearly a quarter less than what it is today.

Their increasingly high caseloads create a gap in services for victims, most significantly during initial investigation, when suspects are at large and often pose the greatest risk to survivors.

We'll be looking at opportunities to fund a third felony advocate to address this current need and enhance the level of advocacy SPD can provide.

And we'll also be looking for opportunities for a fourth BST position that can focus their work on systems improvement for a more trauma-informed, victim-focused response to gender-based violence within the department.

I think we spoke about housing.

I think maybe I might have a bit of an angle too that's more specific to us.

But from a first responder and emergency service and referral program perspective, on the weekends when community programs, their doors are shut for the most part.

The fact that the emergency housing has gone away in a lot of regards.

is very challenging.

We are relying more heavily on using motels.

And this is, again, through donations through the Seattle Police Foundation.

We're finding that this model is putting a strain on existing hotel business partners who are beginning to deny this type of hotel stays for the community programs that we're working with.

that they're using this temporary model of hotel placement as well.

It's not sustainable for our city and it's not what's best for survivors who really need the stability to heal.

So flexible funding, mobile advocacy are proving to be very successful.

It's like what Meryl said, the yes and, that we also need to continue to expand our capacity to respond to the most vulnerable in the most pressing and life-threatening situations that we see every weekend that require immediate response.

I'm recommending the modernization of our criminal justice system communication tools as well.

The criminal justice system remains difficult to navigate.

Survivors are left with questions unanswered and are often confused about their criminal case.

A comprehensive online portal could provide a streamlined way for victims to look up a variety of information, including who they can reach out to for further support throughout this process, connections to community programs.

There's a few successful examples that we've been researching, one of which is Case Companion in Multnomah County down in Oregon.

It was built by Code for America.

And then the Family Justice Center in New York City has also recently launched an online portal called NYC Hope in partnership with Cornell Tech.

My fifth recommendation will be the, this is per recommendation of the recent research that you're aware of, I know already, Council Member Gonzalez, of the Seattle Technology Enabled Coercive Control Working Group.

is that we need to improve the criminal justice system's response to tech abuse, including standardizing trainings and best practices.

Outlined in the research, survivors experiencing tech abuse describe filing numerous police reports with law enforcement either failing to connect a pattern of crime or dismissing the reports as non-criminal behavior altogether.

The lack of a comprehensive response is re-traumatizing these survivors.

We are recommending more resources to investigate and prosecute these crimes, particularly at a misdemeanor level.

The research also recommends the modernization of the civil protection order process to enable survivors of tech abuse to reliably submit digital evidence into record.

We've already discussed my last recommendation, so I'll stop there.

Great.

Thank you.

Any questions for Dana?

All right.

Let's shift over to the folks at the city attorney's office.

Thank you, and thank you so much for having us here today.

Summer and I are both here from the city attorney's office.

Summer is in the domestic violence unit as a victim advocate, and I am a domestic violence prosecutor.

Just to help illustrate some of our work, I wanted to share a case that Summer and I both worked on together.

In every domestic violence case that comes through our office, we always seek victim input.

And so in this case, we sought survivor input about the case going forward, and she was not ready to testify.

And so we made the decision to move forward without her in that case.

We had significant safety concerns.

It was a case that involved the survivor being hit in the face with the butt of a shotgun.

There were threats to kill.

She had run to her neighbor's house for help and made a really terrified call to the police for help that day.

We were able to move forward with this case without her because we, in our unit, we follow the sort of evidence-based prosecution model, meaning we were able to use other components of the case without her testimony.

So photographs of injury, a 911 call, we were able to introduce some portions of the officer's body-worn video just to show her demeanor and her injuries on that night.

And did you need the victim's consent on the body-worn video pieces of the evidence or is that something that the prosecutor can decide?

That is a case-by-case basis and we would make that determination whether to use it or whether we even could use it on a case-by-case basis.

In this case, the survivor did actually end up coming to court and testifying on behalf of her abuser.

That was a decision that she made and we supported her throughout the process and supported her decision to do that.

Summer and I both had a feeling she was going to come in and testify on behalf of her abuser.

Because of the other evidence, the jury still convicted the defendant.

And so prior to sentencing, Summer and I met with her again to seek her input about the city's sentencing recommendation.

And something that she wanted was treatment.

for her partner, she wanted to remain with her partner, but she did want him to get treatment.

She never denied that the abuse had happened to us, but she just wasn't ready to leave him or to step away at that point.

She didn't want any jail time, and so based on her input, that is exactly what we asked for at sentencing.

That's just one example of the work that we do, and we're not able to move forward with every single case that we get, and not every single case has enough evidence that we could proceed without the testimony of a survivor.

Sometimes, you know, if we don't have a survivor who's willing to testify in court, that means that we can't actually move forward with a case and hold that abuser accountable.

And at that point, we just don't move forward.

We never force a survivor to testify in court or to do something that they're not ready to do.

But if we're able to go forward using that evidence-based prosecution model, then we will do that and try to get some accountability for the offender.

And I would say about one-third of my trials have proceeded forward without the testimony of a survivor of domestic violence.

And the reason that we go forward on these cases is because of the massive public safety, community safety concerns.

I think that's something that everyone is aware of, that domestic violence is the greatest predictor of future violence to that individual or within the community.

We're not able to go forward with every case.

One of the issues that we face is a capacity issue, a staffing issue.

We have five prosecutors in our unit.

We have one detective who is assisting with the misdemeanor caseload that we have.

And in 2018, we had 1,287 cases that were actually filed.

And so, In addition to those domestic violence cases, adding in non-domestic violence cases like stalking, cyber-stalking, harassment, child abuse, sexual assault, animal cruelty, what that means is that each prosecutor has a caseload of about 300 cases that they're working on.

Our unit is very innovative, and this city is very innovative.

We're on the forefront of changing the way that we respond to and handle domestic violence and other victim-involved cases.

And we're changing the way that we practice in response to input from survivors.

and in an attempt to hold offenders accountable and increase public safety.

But the issue is capacity.

We need more people.

I think that's something that we've heard from everyone.

We need more people assisting our unit so that we can continue to better serve survivors and better serve our community.

And I'll let Summer talk about the role of the advocates.

Thank you.

So the victim advocates in our office, we have seven advocates now.

And we typically will attempt to make contact with about 3,100 survivors of domestic violence every year.

So for each report that we get, we have an advocate reaching out to try to reach that person.

And we do that because we want to find out what do you want to see happen?

We want to be able to safety plan with them, and we want to be able to connect them with community-based resources as well, because we know that the majority of people who interface with the criminal justice system do so reluctantly.

And for good reason, the criminal justice system has been historically harmful to victims, to survivors, and we acknowledge that.

So our role as advocates is to be there as a support, to help explain the system, to explain the rights of the victim, and to assist them through the life of the case.

For the cases that are filed, it can take six months to a year before a case finds a resolution in our court.

That's a lot of time and a lot of waiting and a lot of questions.

And so our additional role there is to make sure that during that time the victim's input is still considered.

We want survivors to feel like they're heard in our office.

Even if ultimately a prosecutor decides that they're going to make a different decision, it's important that a survivor have the ability to voice their opinion on the case and that they know what their rights are as far as how to continually voice their feelings about a case.

When we work with survivors, we hear consistently that survivors want treatment for offenders.

They don't want jail time.

Jail time can be harmful.

Jail time can mean that they're not working.

Jail time can mean that they could lose housing.

They want treatment.

And so the Domestic Violence Intervention Program is really exciting for our office because it gives us an ability to meet that need, a potential to invest in change and offender accountability in a way that implements a community, coordinated community response because we don't just want to put them in treatment.

We want to make sure that everybody is on the same page about what happens.

in the relationship.

We need the big picture approach to domestic violence because it's not a snapshot that you see in a police report.

It is a pattern of behavior that harms our survivors and our community.

Because of that, when we talk about capacity issues, we're talking about additional prosecution and advocacy staff to specifically address the DVIP program, to go to those meetings, to be there with historical knowledge, to be there with input from survivors about what's going on from previous history, whether it be prior reports that were never filed or if it be new information that the victim is sharing about how the offender's behavior has changed or hasn't changed since they started treatment.

We think consistency is important and investing in that program in that way is one of the best things that we can do.

In addition to that, echoing the wonderful work of VST in highlighting the issue of tech-enabled coercive control, we are falling short on investigating and prosecuting these crimes, even if it's not a cyber-stalking case.

A DV order violation, and we had about 500 last year, could be a text message.

It could be harassment online.

Those cases require a great deal of manpower and technical proficiency that our office, frankly, doesn't have.

So when we are looking at ways that we can assist victims of domestic violence, survivors of domestic violence, We need to listen to them and what they're saying is that they want offender treatment and that they want us to prosecute these cases.

They want our help in keeping them safe in that way.

And so when we don't do anything, puts us on the line.

So those are the things that we really feel are important at this time.

But we also want to invite you to come to our office and see kind of what we do and what our process is.

We are really proud of the work that we do in the domestic violence unit.

Like I said, I know that the system is harmful, can be harmful to victims.

But when they are interfacing with our system, we're doing the best that we can to make sure that we are honoring them with dignity and respect and trying to create outcomes that are separate from your traditional pattern of prosecution.

Yeah.

That's great.

Thank you so much for the work that you're doing.

I know it's hard work.

And I think the panel today really sort of exemplifies how This is really truly a full spectrum of work, right?

There's sort of the prevention and recovery aspects that are much more service-oriented.

And then there are sort of the advocacy pieces around making sure that we're really having transformational change in our systems by changing law and policy and making investments in those things.

And then there are sort of the internal processes, right?

So as institutions and people who work within government institutions, we have a responsibility to not further perpetuate harm or cause harm ourselves in the work that we're doing on the inside to hold people accountable, people who are creating harm.

So I think this sort of really lays out the full spectrum of the universe that we are operating within and really pleased that this is one of those few spaces where I feel like there's a lot of alignment amongst internal and external stakeholders in terms of understanding what unique role each one of us plays in in really eliminating domestic violence and harm within our community.

So I really wanna thank you all for the work that you do every day, the hard work you do every day to advocate for, represent, and protect victims of domestic violence in our city and beyond.

It's really important work, and I really am appreciative of all the work that you do.

Council Member Pacheco, anything you'd like to add?

Just have a quick question.

One of the things I'm going to be particularly mindful of is just in terms of the time of the need for the investment, but also just given just that this is the longest period of economic prosperity that we've had since the Depression, do you see a correlation between when things are going well economically with regards to domestic violence, it goes down, And when things are, you know, we're in a recession, you know, domestic violence goes up.

Is there like research that supports that or?

Oops.

You gotta press that gray button on the stem.

There you go.

Thank you.

It's technology.

Thank you for the question, Councilman.

There's interesting data about what happens around domestic violence and sexual assault and child abuse during times of economic prosperity versus times of economic hardship.

What we do know is that when survivors have no economic means to be able to support their children and no other options but to stay with an abusive partner, then we see an increase in violence.

There is, you know, the myth around who's causing violence, you know, the lifetime television kind of, you know, monster guy.

Of course, that is a subset of the population, but so often it's people who are, believe that they have, you know, they have the entitlement, they have the right to control the people in their lives and there's a lot of things that aren't going well for them.

So, of course, when there's widespread unemployment, for example, then those stresses do increase the behavior, domestic violence victimization.

But I want to emphasize that what we're seeing around both economic prosperity but also this huge gap huge gap between the haves and the have-nots, where so many people are just hanging on by their fingernails to their apartment, working two or three jobs.

For survivors, that means that they have fewer and fewer choices to protect themselves and their children.

So investments that the city can make, both in your public policy agenda, as well as in what are we doing to help people have living wage jobs, and employment protections and a safe, affordable place to live, that those investments are going to make a big difference.

When we look at the, you know, longitudinally, the data indicates that what has reduced domestic violence over time in the United States are the right to a no-fault divorce, economic opportunities for women, and then the opportunities to have help

Thank you.

Just because one of the things I'm going to be trying to be mindful of is just, given the role that I have had for the last three months, we get the economic picture.

And so I'm trying to make sure that this is the critical time to make the investments, given the fact that we anticipate a bit of a slowdown.

How do we make those investments and make those investments in a strategic manner so therefore we're most impactful?

Because I think so much of the work that you all talk about is the intersectionality of so many of the issues that we talk about today as a city and as a region, more specifically homelessness.

And, you know, that, and this first, handout that says domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and children.

I think so much of my own lived experience with regards to my mother and how many times she was on the run with four little kids holding her hand.

And so thank you all for the work that you do.

And if there's anything that I can do to support the work that you do, please feel free to reach out.

So thank you.

Great.

Anything else from any of you for the good of the order here?

All right, well, thank you so much for being with us, and thank you, Council Member Pacheco, for being my co-host of today.

I apologize to the viewing public.

We went 30 minutes longer than we had intended to, but that's how much we think that this subject merits.

It merits a lot more time than an hour and a half, and we certainly have it as a top priority.

here in our city and at the city council in particular, and really appreciate, again, once again, all your work in this space.

So that is our last agenda item.

We have no one who has signed up for public comment.

Is there anyone who intended to sign up for public comment that did not?

Okay, I'm not seeing anybody dashing towards those microphones, so I'm going to close out public comment.

And again, this is our one and only item on the agenda.

There is no other business before the committee, so we are adjourned.

Thank you.