Women’s shelters only a short-term solution

Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004 | 12:49 p.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

November 27 - 28, 2004

Battered women with no immediate housing options in Southern Nevada usually wind up at the Safe Nest, Safe House or Shade Tree shelters.

But because those shelters are designed only for short-term residency, many victims who are short of funds are faced with other dilemmas if they choose not to reside anymore with the perpetrators.

"These women are so brainwashed by their men that they don't remember how to be on their own," Jerri Santo, a Shade Tree advocate, said. "I have a woman who last worked 23 years ago. Now she's forced to get a job and an apartment. She's doing temporary work, cleaning work at conventions, but maybe gets only one assignment a week. When you don't have a work history for 23 years, it's hard to get a job. She doesn't even know how to use a computer."

One barrier battered women face in their quest for independence is a lack of affordable low-income housing in Clark County.

"When they go to apply for Section 8 housing they're on a waiting list for six months to a year," Valentia Bonifasi, a former Shade Tree advocate, said. "So they try to rent a low-income apartment and find a roommate. If we had more assistance with housing, we could get these ladies on their feet faster."

The Women's Development Center, a nonprofit housing agency, assists battered women and others with transitional housing in Clark County to help them get on their feet. But from January through October the agency was able to place only 30 of 88 applicants in low-cost transitional housing, where the stays are typically about six months long.

"It's certainly easier to get a job if you have an address," Candace Ruisi, executive director of the agency, said.

Another problem for battered women is getting financial support, either through welfare or child support, or both.

"The welfare system is very slow," Santo said. "When they apply for welfare they have to wait about 15 days for an appointment and it can take 45 more days after that for them to get money."

The welfare process slows down more if the applicant has problems coming up with sufficient identification for themselves and their children.

"Many times the husband will take the person's ID and the children's birth certificates," Santo said. "So that's a big headache. A lot of women come to Las Vegas to hide, so then we have to contact other states to get birth certificates, and that can take six to 10 weeks."

The snail's pace that it often takes to collect child support payments from perpetrators of domestic violence is a particularly sore spot among victims and their advocates. They blame the Clark County district attorney's office, which pursues nonpaying abusers and other deadbeat parents, for not doing enough to get child support payments quickly enough to battered women.

Like the problems confronted by servers of protective orders who do not have accurate addresses or other information, the same is true of many applications for child support, according to Bob Teuton, assistant district attorney in charge of the Family Support Division.

"Most of the delay is caused by a child support application being incomplete," Teuton said.

With 83,000 ongoing child support cases, Teuton's office applied for a federal grant to hire more child support case managers to help process applications quicker, but the grant was denied.

"Assuming we have everything we need it would take 30 to 60 days to get child support payments," Teuton said. "But it could take months. If a child is born out of wedlock, we have to establish paternity before someone can get child support."

Clark County Legal Services, which provides assistance to low-income residents, has represented numerous battered women through its domestic violence program who have waited months and sometimes years for child support payments.

"Who cares if they get a court order for child support if they can't get the money?" Veronica Thronson, directing attorney of the domestic violence program, said. "I have a woman who was supposed to get child support beginning in March, and she still hasn't received it. The district attorney's office knows where he works, but my client hasn't gotten her money.

"Our clients are desperate, so what do they do? They go on welfare."

That's what Robin (not her real name), 30, had to do after the father of her twin daughters stopped paying child support. In an ongoing child support case that has dragged on for four years, Robin thought it would be no problem getting monthly reimbursements from him until he challenged her for custody of the children in Family Court.

Although she retained custody of the children, Robin said the child support portion of the case is still ongoing because it has been riddled with conflicting court rulings. At one point, she was supposed to get $700 a month. Then it was reduced to $390 a month, payments of which were made only sporadically. Then it was reduced to zero, she said.

Robin, who gets federal disability payments for herself because she cannot work, had also received disability for her twins because they were born prematurely. But those disability payments expired last spring, and she has been forced to rely on state-funded welfare.

Now that she is on welfare, she said the district attorney's office seems to be working harder on her behalf to get the child support from her ex-boyfriend so that the state can be reimbursed.

"This has been going on for four years, and I don't have the time for all of this," she said. "When it's time to get child support payments from a parent the district attorney's office lollygags, but when you're collecting money from the state they go after the child support because they want that money back immediately."