Trauma Informed Advocates Program

Women Helping Women (WHW) proposes to implement the Transitional Housing Assistance Program to assist victims of crime by addressing gaps in access to housing for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, and their children in the four-county service area of Hamilton County; Butler County; Brown County; and Adams County in Ohio. Project activities include the implementation of the Domestic Violence Housing First Model (DVHF) which is empirically proven to significantly empower survivors to achieve stable housing with long-term safety and well-being. The DVHF model relies on survivor-driven housing-inclusive advocacy and flexible financial assistance, such as rental assistance, utility assistance, eviction prevention, and other related expenses. Survivors will be supported by WHW comprehensive rapid-response services and will receive support from trauma-informed advocates to maintain housing, create safety plans, and access internal and external wraparound services. WHW engages over 30 landlords, and through this grant program will extend outreach and advocacy to an additional 20 landlords.
Expected outcomes include: 2 survivors/households per month will receive financial assistance for housing-related costs, and 95% of survivors will either secure housing or remain stably housed during the project period; 94% of survivors will indicate that their needs were met, that they know more about community resources and how to plan for their safety, and will develop a plan for safety; and 20 additional landlords will engage and be trained through outreach efforts. Advocates track the number of survivors, the amount of financial assistance provided, and how the assistance was used to support the survivor, as well as survivor demographics. The baseline will be determined based on a 12-month retrospective of housing-related financial assistance provided by WHW.
The project will support survivors in WHW five-county service area which spans over 2,419 square miles in Southwest Ohio, and includes urban, suburban, and rural areas. There are 1,485,362 people living in these counties, of which 50.48% are women. Within the service area, 28% of the population identifies as a person of color, yet 40% of survivors served by WHW in 2023 identified as a person of color, and Black survivors made up 32% of survivors but only 17% of the population. In Ohio, approximately 64% of unmet requests for services by survivors are related to emergency shelter and housing; this project is intended to close the gap in housing-related services for these survivors in the service region.