Politics & Government

Shelter for Battered Women Closes

The state government shutdown pulled the plug on the Lewis House in Hastings, one of just two shelters serving Dakota County.

A Dakota County shelter for battered women was forced to close last night due to the state shutdown. Officials from Burnsville-based 360 Communities locked up the Lewis House in Hastings at midnight on Friday.

The Hastings safe house is just one of many shelters going dark.

“That’s going to be the same all across the state,” said Mary Ajax, the president and CEO of the organization. “Every shelter is going to be in the same situation that we’re in.”

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One of the shelter’s residents nearly ended up on the street after she discovered that shelters had been closed or were operating at maximum capacity. The young mother, whose name has been withheld, was forced to flee her Minneapolis home after a violent incident with the father of her one-year-old son. The alleged abuser is still at large.

“I didn’t take anything with me other than my son,” said the woman, who was still visibly shaken by the experience. “The police gave me a card with phone numbers for shelters, but all of them in the metro area were closed already or full, without even a waiting list. I was shocked that it was true.”

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As a last resort, she came to the Hastings House, even though it is too far away from her work. The woman has no car. That was on Sunday. By Thursday, she and her toddler had to pick up and move again — this time to 360 Communities Eagan Safehouse, which will remain open for the short term. Ajax said the organization has enough money to last through Aug. 22.

On Wednesday, Ramsey County Judge  Kathleen Gearin issued a ruling that would continue funding for many vital programs like food assistance, state-run medical programs, and school funding. However, women’s shelters were not included in the list of essential services.

“I think most people I talk to are surprised that shelters aren’t considered an essential service,” Ajax said. “We’re talking life and death situations here. We have got to be available for people. I’m not exaggerating when I say that people die in domestic abuse situations all the time.”

Thus, in an instant, 360 Communities lost a large chunk of their $5 million annual budget. About 40 percent of that total comes from the state and federal government.

“We get $1.2 million from the state of Minnesota per year to support our domestic violence work, which is 24-7,” Ajax said. “That just stopped, as of midnight tonight. That is the hugest impact on us.”

The non-profit does not have the reserves to keep their services running. They are keeping the doors open thanks only to a large donation from a long-time supporter. The donor intended to disburse the gift over a period of many years, but given the circumstances they have released $100,000 to 360 Communities. The lifeline will tide the organization over for about two months.

Advocates across the state have put in a request to continue funding to shelters. The Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women petitioned the court on Friday.  According to the Star Tribune, Kathleen Blatz, a retired state Supreme Court judge appointed as a special master, could start issuing her recommendations for state funding as early as Saturday.

“That would be a blessing,” Ajax said.

In the meantime, the organization will be operating out of one house, the Eagan location, which will be manned by a skeleton staff.  The timing couldn’t be worse, Ajax said: Rates of domestic abuse accelerates in summer. It is the safe house’s busiest time of the year. Friday afternoon, workers set up cots in the children’s playroom, office spaces and the conference room to accommodate families from Hastings.

Ideally, the Eagan location can house 25 people at a time. At maximum, it can take about 40. There are no other domestic abuse shelters in Dakota County.

“We felt we needed to take the approach of it’s better to keep one house open more days than take the risk. There was no way we could keep both open so we just had to make that very difficult decision,” Ajax said. “I’ve worked here since 1975 and I’ve been through budget problems and state shutdowns before. We’ve never had to do this.”

360 Communities had to lay off a substantial portion of its staff for the foreseeable future. The layoffs highlight an impending wave of unemployment resulting from the shutdown.

“This has affected many, many families. They’re saying that 20,000 people were laid off  by the state but the ramifications are much greater than that, because they are not counting the people who have also laid off around the state as a result as a result of (private businesses) losing contracts,” Ajax said.

The non-profit sector is especially dependent on government funding, whether from the local, state or federal level. In some cases, federal dollars are dispersed through state agencies and if there’s no one at the state level to receive receipts and allocate money, nonprofits are left without that funding.

The shutdown has forced many to discontinue programming, cut staffing or shutter altogether, either temporarily or permanently.

That could affect a large segment of the workforce. Minnesota’s 3,750 nonprofits employ one of every nine workers in the state, according to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, earning wages of $13.2 billion in 2009. Slightly more than half of those workers—about 153,000—are in the Twin Cities metro area.

“If (the shutdown) lasts more than three or four weeks, I think it’s at that point that you’re going to start seeing nonprofits getting into the next phase of their contingency planning,” said Frank Forsberg, senior vice president of community impact for the Greater Twin Cities United Way, which has nearly 200 agency partners and helps fund more than 400 programs.

Forsberg said United Way officials work with partners on an ongoing basis to create multiple contingency plans and put cash-flow resources in places to bridge any unforeseen or significant losses of funding, state or otherwise.

With the writing on the wall, he said planning elevated a month ago when a shutdown seemed inevitable.

The United Way, which raised $88.5 million in 2010, altered its disbursement schedule to help its sponsored programs to continue running.

Typically, Forsberg said, United Way pays monthly installments to its partners. To help protect the programs during the shutdown, United Way advanced three months’ worth of allocations for agencies most impacted.

 “We are hearing from a lot of our members that they are making a lot of tough decisions,” said Christine Durand, spokesperson for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. Among the kinds of nonprofit work not included in state funding during the shutdown: childcare, domestic-violence prevention and assistance, food assistance, arts and environment and weatherization.

MCN briefings to help nonprofit groups grapple with the effects of a shutdown began three weeks ago and will continue, Durand said. Among the topics: how to lay off and furlough workers.

Their work “touches every Minnesotan in some way, shape or form,” Durand said, but “they can’t run on air.”

 Such was the case at Eagan’s safe house, where the goal was simply survival for both the clients and 360 Communities alike.

 “We’re going to be bare bones, just trying to be here 24-7 and trying to keep the doors open,” Ajax said. “We need the community’s help and support to keep these services ongoing. If the community cares about these services and believes that they ought to be there for their neighbors then the community needs to help us. 100 percent contributions keeping it going now.”

 To help 360 Communities go to their web site or call 651-452-7288. Find more coverage of the shutdown .


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