Discouraging news for District domestic violence shelters. (Photo: TBD Staff)

District service providers for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault will face a $3 million budget shortfall next year. According to Melissa Hook, director of D.C.'s Office of Victim's Services, the "substantial decrease in budget" is the result of several factors, including rising costs, the expiration of key federal funding, and the slow drain of the D.C. Crime Victims Compensation fund.

Hook says that her office has seen a "substantial increase in annual fixed costs to support the operations and debt service" of key victims services in the city, including "three new domestic violence shelters," the D.C. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program, and "24/7 crisis response to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and survivors of victims of homicide."

Meanwhile, funding from the D.C. Superior Court's Crime Victim Compensation Program has declined in recent years. In the past decade, the program has funneled $38 million in court fines and fees to help victims service providers support between 15,000 and 30,000 victims of violent crime each year. In a testimony in front of the D.C. council last week, Hook said that the "substantial revenue from the courts" helped "build capacity, introduce best practices, and establish an excellent coordinated community response to victims of violent crime in our communities."

With those funds nearly drained, Hook says that the Office of Victims Services "is actively pursuing new federal discretionary and private foundation funding" for the upcoming fiscal year and is "working closely with victim service providers to develop collaborative funding initiatives outside of government to assist them in attaining long term financial sustainability."

For the 30 victims services organizations that already provide housing, counseling, legal support, and emergency services to victims, the budget gap means that they may see their budgets guttered or their doors closed. And recent initiatives to expand victims services in D.C. are unlikely to garner any government support. When news broke last week that Medicaid funding for D.C. abortions got slashed in the federal budget deal, individual donors across the country raised tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of days to help low-income women secure abortions. The budget battle over domestic violence services in D.C. is unlikely to spark such grassroots activism, but District victims of violence need the support all the same.