Last year, when Syd Moore began work helping survivors of domestic violence find housing, they managed about eight cases. Now, Moore works with two dozen cases, with another five expected soon.
Moore used to be one of two housing navigators employed by Safe Voices, a resource center for survivors of domestic violence serving Oxford, Franklin and Androscoggin Counties. Housing navigators play an important role in the state’s tight housing market, helping people wade through paperwork to apply for subsidized housing and supporting them for up to two years after they have left a shelter.
But when the other housing navigator left her position, Safe Voices held off on hiring a replacement, citing uncertainty about the status of federal funding going into the next fiscal year.
“I’m spread pretty thin across all of these people who could really benefit from more attention,” said Moore.
Despite its low crime rate overall, Maine has a high rate of domestic violence.
The Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, a network of ten resource centers across the state, worked with 12,385 people experiencing domestic violence in 2024 alone. That same year, nearly 43 percent of homicides in Maine were linked to domestic violence, according to the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Last year saw several high-profile domestic violence killings in Maine: Emali Sallee, a 19-year-old from Lewiston, was shot by her boyfriend in April; Virginia Cookson, of Bangor, was strangled by her ex-boyfriend in September; Lisa and Jennifer Bailey, a mother and daughter from Bath, were shot by Jennifer’s father in October.
The rate of domestic violence homicides in Maine has remained stubbornly high for decades, hovering around half of killings each year. Most of the victims are women killed by men they know, in line with national statistics.
The funding to support organizations that work with survivors comes primarily from state and federal grants. Many of the state’s resource centers rely heavily on federal money: of the five organizations that The Monitor spoke with, federal grants comprised anywhere between 40 to 85 percent of their annual budgets.
Grants from the Dept. of Justice Office on Violence Against Women fund positions across the state, Francine Garland Stark, executive director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, told lawmakers this spring, including a prosecutor, a law enforcement officer, four attorneys and three sexual assault advocates, as well as advocacy work.
“All those funds are currently in jeopardy due to changes at the federal level,” said Stark. “Nearly half of these grants end on September 30 of this year, and the process for applying to renew them has been shut down — with no indication of when it may reopen.”
While the grant applications were reopened in May, many organizations, anticipating a loss of funding, have implemented hiring freezes, adding to pre-existing staffing shortages and further burdening remaining employees, as well as delaying repairs to buildings and, in one case, canceling a planned apartment building on which they had already spent $200,000.
“These are dire times, indeed,” Stark told lawmakers.
At Partners for Peace, which covers Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, staff are stretched so thin that the legal team has to “pick and choose which courts we have the capacity to go to,” said Jenna Legere, the organization’s legal and justice program manager. They no longer have a rural legal services coordinator, who would support survivors in rural areas with their legal proceedings.
“We want to be able to go to all of them [Protection From Abuse order hearings] every single day, but with our small team, it’s been impossible to do that.”
The hiring freeze has impacted a range of services at Partners for Peace. Like Safe Voices, they are short a housing navigator. They are also missing an administrative assistant and a Child Protective Services liaison, who would advocate for survivors and their children.
York County District Attorney Kathryn Slattery said the legal advocacy services provided by domestic violence resource centers are crucial to ensuring victims cooperate with the legal process.
“It’s very important that we maintain contact with victims throughout the process and make sure they have the support they need,” she said. “Otherwise, they might be less likely to continue to cooperate with the prosecution.”
Partners for Peace relies heavily on federal funding. In fiscal year 2023, their budget was nearly $2.5 million dollars, 80 percent of which came from the federal government, according to the organization’s annual report.
According to Partners for Peace Executive Director Amanda Cost, as a sub-recipient of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, Partners for Peace receives federal grants from the Department of Justice, the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, the Victims of Crime Act, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many of these grants are funneled through MCEDV, and they fund the shelter, transitional housing program and legal assistance program at Partners for Peace, among several other services.
With federal funding in doubt, organizations are increasingly turning to private individuals and foundations to support this work.
“We’ve definitely picked up our efforts to get larger gifts from some of our private donors,” said Grace Kendall, director of development and engagement at Safe Voices. “With the federal part [of our budget] being at risk, I’m having to go to donors and say, ‘I need to ask you for a lot more this year than I have in the past.’”
At the same time, advocates recognize that individual charity has its limits — especially with so many social services facing federal funding cuts. “We reach out to local businesses, we reach out to individuals and all of that,” said Rebecca Hobbs, executive director at Through These Doors, which serves Cumberland County. “But I think people are really being stretched thin because we’re doing that, and everyone is doing that, and individuals can only carry so much of that community support.”
State funding may offer additional support to domestic violence resource centers. This spring, the legislature passed L.D. 875: An Act to Fund Essential Services for Victims of Domestic Violence, which would provide $4 million in annual funding for domestic violence resource centers. The bill was carried over to the second session of the legislature, which begins in January next year.
Rebecca Austin, executive director of Safe Voices, said the federal government has typically funded organizations like hers because they see them as making communities safer. “The work that we do helps law enforcement, it helps the court system, it helps probation officers, it helps counselors, it helps schools,” she said.
“We can absolutely do as much as we can to find other ways to support the work,” Austin adds. “But without funding from the federal government, the work cannot happen in the ways that it always has.”
