Calls For Help Climb As Domestic Violence Pushes Women Into Homelessness

Leangela Frazier remembers when she no longer had a stable place to live. The 39-year-old single mother of four had left a difficult relationship and was bouncing between couches. “I always kept a roof over my kids’ head but after that situation, I had to take all four of my kids and go,” Frazier says.

A friend pointed her to Women’s Empowerment, the Sacramento nonprofit that helps women experiencing homelessness rebuild their lives. After attending an orientation, she was approved for the program and committed to nine weeks of intensive classes. That difficult relationship had become abusive and left Frazier essentially homeless if not for Women’s Empowerment.

In 2023, California police fielded more than 160,000 calls related to domestic violence — about 18 calls every hour — according to the Public Policy Institute of California. That is down from 2001, when police responded to more than 198,000 calls, or nearly 23 every hour. However, the number of domestic violence incidents has remained between 18 and 19 calls per hour since 2017.

In Sacramento, police fielded 1,891 domestic violence-related calls in 2020, which jumped to 2,091 in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2023, the number had nearly doubled again to 4,971 before dipping slightly to 4,802 in 2024, according to the California Department of Justice.

Unfortunately, many Black women become homeless and develop lasting health issues after experiencing domestic violence.

Advocates in Sacramento say domestic violence is one of the leading drivers of homelessness for women, particularly Black women, who already face disproportionate barriers in housing and health care. Women leaving abusive partners often have few safe places to go, and the trauma compounds when children are involved.

Julie Seewald Bornhoeft, chief strategy and sustainability officer for WEAVE Inc., explained that every woman who comes into the organization’s safe house is experiencing homelessness in some form — whether staying in a shelter, lacking stable housing, or fleeing immediate danger. Many still technically have a home when they reach out, but the violence inside makes it unsafe.

She says the urgency often lies in how quickly survivors must find new housing or face homelessness. To meet that need, WEAVE provides an emergency shelter, transitional housing, and nine units of permanent supportive housing. The overlap between domestic violence and homelessness, Bornhoeft says, is undeniable.

One of the biggest barriers is financial stress and abuse. Nearly every person entering WEAVE’s safe house has experienced it. Sometimes that means job loss because injuries prevented them from working, or harassment forced them to leave. Employers may fail to recognize the abuse and provide protections, leaving women with gaps in employment that make it harder to find work.

Financial abuse also can take the form of coerced debt. Survivors often are pressured into taking out credit in their names, only to have abusers run up balances that go unpaid. In some cases, credit is taken out in a victim’s name without their knowledge. Either way, the damage to credit makes securing housing nearly impossible. Even women who remain employed may not have access to family finances, leaving them with virtually nothing when they escape.

Beyond finances, survivors often face physical injuries, long-term disabilities or preexisting conditions that add another layer of vulnerability. Abusers also use isolation as a form of control, cutting off women from family, friends or faith communities. Without those support systems, many survivors feel they have nowhere to turn.

Bornhoeft emphasized that survivors of domestic violence are resilient, often raising and protecting children while enduring unpredictable violence. But the barriers they face after leaving are immense. For Black women, those barriers are compounded by centuries of racism, intergenerational trauma and systemic inequities that create an additional layer of vulnerability to homelessness.

The toll is both immediate and long-term. Survivors often carry the exhaustion of trying not to “set off” an abuser, taking responsibility for preventing violence that is out of their control. That constant stress wears down the body and leads to mental health struggles. “Leaving is a process, not an act,” Bornhoeft says, noting that the common question of why doesn’t she just leave ignores the complexity of trauma, fear, financial barriers and safety risks.

The physical consequences also can be severe. Injuries may lead to chronic pain or disability, while emotional abuse and isolation deepen the risk of long-term health problems. Together, these factors create an environment where survivors are at higher risk for depression, anxiety, substance use and chronic illness.

Between June 2024 and July 2025, WEAVE fielded 8,544 calls to its 24/7 support line for safety planning and advocacy. During the same period, the nonprofit provided counseling to 1,657 survivors, legal services to 958 survivors, and more than 16,600 nights of emergency shelter for 166 adults and children.

Among survivors accessing in-person services, 27% identified as Black or African American, 22% as multiracial, 34% as white, 8% as Latino, 6% as Asian, 2% as Native American and 1% as Pacific Islander. Bornhoeft noted that in past years, Latino survivors made up closer to 25% and Black survivors about 30%, with far fewer identifying as multiracial. She attributed the shifts in part to changes in how WEAVE collects demographic information.

That racial breakdown is stark when compared with Sacramento County’s population. Census data show Black residents make up about 11% of the county, while multiracial residents account for a little more than 7%. Black and multiracial survivors are therefore overrepresented among those seeking help, underscoring the disproportionate impact on communities of color.

Dr. Paméla Michelle Tate, executive director of San Francisco-based Black Women Revolt Against Domestic Violence, says the barriers to shelter often begin with how emergency housing is defined. San Francisco has only 72 emergency shelter beds dedicated to survivors of domestic violence. To qualify, a survivor must be in imminent danger, often just released from the hospital or leaving an abusive situation within the past three months. “If that does not qualify, like say it happened six months ago but today you decided you wanted to leave, generally speaking you’re not eligible,” Tate says.

For many survivors, the question is simple but devastating: is there a shelter bed available for you and your children? “And usually the case is, unfortunately, no,” she says. The wait for a bed depends, but Tate estimated about a 60% turndown rate. That often leaves survivors choosing between staying in a dangerous home or moving into a general homeless shelter.

In a domestic violence shelter, survivors are given a private or semi-private room where they can close a door, use a shared kitchen, and begin to rebuild a sense of safety. In a homeless shelter, the setup is more like an open dormitory. “Someone might try and steal your stuff. Someone might try and touch you in the middle of the night. Someone might try and touch your children,” Tate says. “And people freak out because it’s too open.”

Even when survivors find a transitional program, the challenges don’t end. Some transitional housing allows stays of up to 364 days, but Tate says survivors remain traumatized. Their children may be forced to transfer schools. They may have to start new jobs or look for work for the first time in years. “Their entire life has changed,” she says.

Children might be starting daycare or new schools, survivors might be starting a new job, and they are still dealing with court visits for visitation. Tate says that can include threats from the abusive partner, such as “if you don’t come back to me, I’m going to hurt the kids.” Even when visitation is supervised, she says, mothers are left worrying all weekend: Did the kids have dinner? Are they safe?

One of the most damaging myths is the idea that women can easily leave abusive relationships. “They don’t know all of the mitigating factors that make people stay. So if someone says that they’re experiencing it, believe them,” she says. Even those who can rely on a friend’s couch are only finding a temporary solution, she adds, and many women still have no safe exit.

She says raising money for survivors remains an uphill fight. “As soon as you say domestic violence, it’s like I spoke with a green burger on the middle of my forehead and I look like an alien being,” Tate says. “Everybody knows someone who’s experienced domestic violence, even if it’s not yourself. But we don’t give the same kind of care and attention to survivors that we give to animals. If we did, I think we could definitely get ahead of some of this.”

Programs like Women’s Empowerment and WEAVE work to break this cycle. Women’s Empowerment offers nine weeks of training and healing classes, while WEAVE provides emergency shelter, counseling and legal advocacy. Together, they highlight how community-based organizations step into gaps left by underfunded housing and health systems.

“If it wasn’t for the program, I don’t know where me and my kids would be,” Frazier says.

Bornhoeft says WEAVE’s work is also shaped by political and funding realities. At the moment, the organization’s direct federal funding has not been cut, but she noted threats from Washington — including talk of withholding funds from so-called blue states — are concerning. About 70% of WEAVE’s budget comes from government grants and contracts, leaving it vulnerable to shifts in political priorities.

Tate says she already has seen the impact elsewhere. At a recent hearing, she recalled another nonprofit leader revealing her agency lost $550,000 in Violence Against Women Act funding, money that flows through states to community-based organizations. Cuts like that, she says, have a ripple effect and reduce frontline services.

Both Bornhoeft and Tate say the pressure is constant. Housing is always the greatest challenge, and every room at WEAVE’s emergency shelter is full. “When you have that, when every bed is taken by an adult or a child, and you know there are more people out there, that’s hard,” Bornhoeft says.

She adds that violence is not just a family matter but a community and public health problem, affecting across schools, workplaces and neighborhoods. Too often, homelessness is oversimplified or blamed on drug use, when in reality “a large percentage of the homeless population, particularly when you look at women, are homeless because of domestic violence. They are homeless because there is insufficient shelter and housing. They are homeless because of broken, intertwined systems.” Black women, she says, are overrepresented in that group.

“The most resilient people you will meet are those that are surviving and navigating a violent relationship,” Bornhoeft says.

In Sacramento County, the number of women seeking help from domestic violence shelters has grown steadily in recent years. Black women make up a disproportionate share of those numbers. Advocates argue that policies addressing homelessness and public health must integrate domestic violence prevention if the region hopes to make progress.

As Frazier’s story illustrates, the line between survival and homelessness is thin — and for many Black women in Sacramento, domestic violence is what pushes them across it.

This is being reported with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 Ethnic Media Collaborative, Healing California.