Washington DV Press

Trudy Schuett lays down the truth as always. Here’s why:

As reported earlier today in East Valley Living, the state of Arizona will be making drastic cuts to expenditures for women-only domestic violence programs.  Although the total amount of the downsizing statewide was not discussed in the piece, much was made of the current expenditures of Sojourner House, one of the most anti-male, anti-family institutions in the state of AZ:

Phillips said that the cost to keep one bed open for one day is $55, and then to keep a bed open for one year is roughly $20,075.  Therefore, in order to open up the additional 44 beds at the Sojourner Center, the shelter would need about $883,000 more a year.  This figure would include all of the emergency services, clothing, food, empowerment classes, and much more that the shelter provides.

The building itself needs about $1 million in renovations, but Phillips said they could get everything started with just about $50,000.

“It will happen some day,” Phillips said.  “The way that things are looking, people are say it’s going to be around 2014 before we get out of this downward spiral.”

Phillips said that one thing the poor economy has not caused for the shelter is an increase of women seeking help, which may or may not be a good thing.

“I think that with the economy the way it is, women are more frightened to leave,” Phillips said.  “They are staying in violent relationships because they feel there is no other choice right now.”

Mansene said it is so important to make sure shelters have enough money because they do not only offer women a place to stay.  The shelter offers 280 emergency shelter beds with a maximum stay of six months and transitional housing apartments where women can live and pay a subsidized rent for an additional two years.  In addition, the shelter offers empowerment services to victims and their families.

“When the women come into our shelter, they are encouraged to create goals for themselves,” Mansene said.  “And from that, we do everything we can to help them achieve their goals.”

The shelter has licensed childcare, empowerment classes, a computer room and free healthcare.

OK, now let’s see if I have this right:

Most of their expenditures are for housing
They don’t have an increase in women looking for help

Yet they want to expand and provide more identical services, which consist primarily of housing, babysitting, feminist ideology (that’s what they mean when they say “empowerment”)  and medical care.  Of course we can’t forget the legal assistance, because without the divorces and orders of protection, Sojourner Center, and most of the other 1,999 programs in the US would be nothing more than homeless shelters with Marxist preachers.

Note there are no programs for women who don’t want to leave their homes, and their spokeswoman doesn’t even seem to consider the program itself might be out of step with the times.  She doesn’t mention any consideration that perhaps a change in approach could be appropriate, considering societal changes since 1977, when the program was founded.

It is very clear that Sojourner Center is ignoring the decades that have gone past outside their cloistered walls.

They could save a huge percentage of their expenditures simply by recognizing that the need today is not for housing and feminist ideology, not for bullying women into divorce and sending their partners/spouses to jail, but maybe a little emergency quiet time for a day or two. Maybe abused people could benefit from talking to a trained professional who understands difficult relationships and can help them discover what the options in a real-world scenario (rather than a feminist world) would be.

Sojourner Center and the other women-only programs could sell off much of their real estate and place their operations in visible locations in good neighborhoods, where community members would be much more likely to want to attend meetings and counseling sessions.

Without the fear of being forced to leave everything behind, getting an unwanted divorce or sending a loved one to jail, perhaps more people would be interested in seeking aid for bad relationships. A less-radical approach could also reduce the increase in danger faced by the abused, if “getting help” stops being the drastic, profound, and often damaging exercise it is currently.

Recognizing that their clientele is shrinking, not due to fear or stupidity, but because the world has changed, they could also begin to serve women with jobs, women who own their own homes, and maybe even sneak a man or two in there. (After all, it’s the program that hates men, not their clientele.)

If they continue to refuse to change with the times, perhaps they would better off as a privately-funded institution, where they could be as backward and inflexible as they like.

As it is now, Sojourner Center and the other agencies of its ilk are doing very little for the people of the state of Arizona. Other than increasing the numbers of fatherless children and adding to the numbers of the working poor, neither Sojourner Center or any other so-called “women’s shelter” can demonstrate any actual value to their communities.

These are difficult financial times for everyone. Neither the state of Arizona nor the victims of abuse who go without aid due to the biased nature of nearly all publicly-funded domestic violence and partner abuse programs can afford the luxury of an experiment in social engineering that should have ended decades ago.

Every other agency in the state has to face reality, why shouldn’t they?