By David Wilfong
NDG Special Contributor
According to the last annual report from the Dallas Domestic Violence Task Force, there were an average of 179 people served in emergency shelters each month in the city. According to Debra Nixon Bowles, Dallas is woefully inadequate when it comes to shelter space for the local need.
“We would need another Omni Hotel to be honest with you,” Bowles said.
Bowles is the founder and president of Women Called Moses, a non-profit organization dedicated to being “an underground railroad for victims of domestic violence,” and says that the holiday period such as Christmas and new Years puts an extra strain on the already-limited resources available in Dallas. When the shelters are full, Women Called Moses are often referred cases for emergency housing in hotels.
“It went pretty well,” Bowles said of the most recent holiday surge. “We had a lot of women we were able to really bless and put in hotels and gave a lot of toys to kids who were in hotels and couldn’t get out due to domestic violence.”
The idea that the Christmas holidays would lead to higher incidences of domestic violence seems counterintuitive, but Bowles says that all the key elements are in place for potential problems.
“A lot of women end up just homeless with their children,” Bowles said. “During the holiday season you have a lot of drinking, people not working much, and the kids are home during the holidays. They eat more. There’s more interaction with momma’s boyfriend or girlfriend and just a lot of tension in the house due to the fact that — most of the parents that are out here – there’s only one income coming in. So a lot of people are trying to figure out, ‘How can I buy? How can I do more?’ Here the holiday is, and so it becomes really tense in the home.”
Because homelessness factors into the equation, it is sometimes difficult to come up with hard numbers as to exactly how large the problem is. However, the Task Force’s report conducted from June 2015 to May 2016 does provide some insight.
In that time period, there were five “intimate partner homicides” in Dallas, down from 10 the year before. There were also 500 prosecutions in which strangulation was included in the offense, which saw a 198 percent increase from the prior year.
The Dallas Police Department responded to 15,124 calls related to domestic violence, also a slight increase from the prior year’s numbers. There were 5,765 misdemeanor arrests (3 percent increase), 1,458 felony arrests (12 percent increase) and 178 protective orders issued (19 percent increase).
There was also a 34 percent increase in the number of men, women and children turned away from shelters for lack of room, 10,154 in total.
When looking at the total number of rooms and beds available for such services, the problem becomes clear. According to the Task Force’s report (based on responses given from local agencies) there are a total of 84 rooms and 239 beds in emergency inventory, and 69 rooms, 163 beds for transitional cases.
In off-site facilities there are an additional seven rooms (10 beds) for emergency cases and seven rooms (seven beds) for transitional.
“This year’s shelter capacities may have varied from previous years’ due to some shelters experiencing decreases in federal or state funding, which significantly impacted their ability to provide shelter services,” the report noted in clarification. “Other shelters experienced an increase in capacity due to the merging of existing facilities and the opening of new facilities resulting from new or increased funding.”
Further details illustrated that shelter capacity in the city never dropped below 89 percent, with most months hovering above the 95 percent mark.
“Over the past two years, 30 family violence-related murders have occurred within the City of Dallas,” the Task Force reported of the most tragic cases. “Of those, 14 occurred in the 2015-2016 reporting period, down from 16 in the previous 12-month period.”
“I hope people never get that call, that their son or daughter has been killed,” Bowles said.
In addition to the problem of total beds available, there is also the issue of not having facilities at all in some areas which can experience the highest levels of need.
“There is not a shelter for domestic violence in the southern sector,” Bowles said. “And I’ve been doing this 15 years. You have Family Place and Genesis which are the largest two ‘motherships.’ So if they’re already at capacity, and most of those women for Genesis come more from the north. The ones for Family Place come more like from Garland and Mesquite. But then when you talk about the southern sector, we used to have the MLK Center, but they’re no longer in there and haven’t been for like two or three years.”
Bowles also laments a lack of necessary public transportation down to southern areas such as Duncanville and Cedar Hill.
With the Christmas rush past, Bowles said it is time to prepare for the next “busy season” experienced in this business: Summer.
“Summertime is very difficult,” Bowles said. “A lot of the children are home all day, and we have a lot of children that end up getting abused or molested because the mother is not home. She’s trying to work overtime, so a lot of our young girls come to us and tell us that, ‘My momma’s boyfriend is molesting me,’ or ‘He’s beating up on us.’ Or a lot of the boys go out and they sell drugs or they become little pimps. They go out and try to survive.
“It’s all about survival.”
Resources:
Women Called Moses
PO Box 381923
Duncanville, TX 75138
(972) 298-1155
PO Box 381923
Duncanville, TX 75138
(972) 298-1155
The Family Place
PO Box 7999
Dallas, TX 75209
(214) 559-2170
PO Box 7999
Dallas, TX 75209
(214) 559-2170
Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support
4411 Lemmon Ave., Ste. 201
Dallas, TX 75219
(214) 389-7700
4411 Lemmon Ave., Ste. 201
Dallas, TX 75219
(214) 389-7700
