Women’s shelter opens amid spike in violence
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, local philanthropist Betty Chinn said she began seeing women who had been abused sitting on the sidewalks of Eureka with their children with nowhere to go.
“That broke my heart,” Chinn said. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to open a women’s shelter when the landlord from across the street of the Betty Kwan Chinn Day Center in Eureka told Chinn he had a space for rent in the building. Chinn opened the shelter in late August of the past year after getting the support her neighbors and the city.
“It’s something that’s sorely needed in our area, a shelter for women and women and children,” Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery told the TimesStandard. “It’s definitely one of the areas that we’re lacking as far as shelters are concerned. For men, we have good capacity.”
The shelter has four spacious rooms to serve women with children and four rooms to serve single women for a period of up to six months with the possibility of staying longer on a case-by-case basis. Chinn said she tells the women their main priority is to heal from the abuse they experienced and they can take as long as they need to do that before Chinn and her staff begin providing case management to help them get jobs and find housing.
Most of the women don’t need to stay that long and end up averaging three months at the shelter before finding work and permanent housing, Chinn said. To date, the shelter has helped three families and four single women move into permanent housing, with more women beginning to rotate in and out.
Sometimes the process might take longer; Chinn described one woman who wouldn’t speak when she got to the shelter because she had suffered severe abuse, but had recently begun talking again.
The shelter prioritizes women who have been experiencing domestic violence, which providers said has been on the rise since the pandemic began.
There has continued to be a steady increase in calls from women seeking help for domestic and intimate partner violence, said Brenda Bishop, executive director of Humboldt Domestic Violence Services.
Spring and summer tend to be a time when domestic violence increases because women are more likely to leave, particularly if they have children because it’s easier to relocate when they’re not in school, Bishop said.
“Whereas fall and winter tend to be colder and a little more difficult to relocate,” she said.
On top of that, partners are surveilled more by their abusers who are at home because of the pandemic and are less likely to reach out for resources, she said.
The nonprofit works in partnership with the Betty Kwan Chinn Homeless Foundation and have referred clients to her shelter for a variety of reasons, Bishop said.
“Sometimes they don’t qualify for our services,” Bishop said, “or maybe our safe haven is full, so we’re always happy to see more women’s sheltering in particular because there really is not a women’s shelter.”
Women experiencing domestic or intimate partner violence become homeless because they’re escaping abuse, Bishop said.
Chinn said it wouldn’t have been possible to open the shelter without the support of the community, which donated furniture and new bedding, as well as art and quilts to adorn the walls and create a colorful atmosphere. Other members of the community helped renovate and paint the building, Chinn said.
The city of Eureka also provided Betty’s Annex with $15,000 to cover rent and renovations in addition to another $15,000 for the next two years to support the program, with the possibility of an extension, Slattery said.
The Betty Kwan Chinn Day Center in Eureka can be reached at 707-407-3833.