YWCA OF GREATER PORTLAND

YWCA’s Yolanda Project offers emergency shelter and advocacy services to DV survivors and their children throughout our community, and provides emergency housing assistance, individual advocacy and support services, and long-term shared housing opportunities for survivors and their families, helping them to achieve safety, stability, and independence. In doing so, we partner with community organizations that serve particularly vulnerable populations, providing support and resources for DV survivors at or near homelessness. YWCA currently implements DV services with staff co-located at the Gateway Center, which acts as a one-stop resource center for DV survivors, Home Forward, the largest provider of public housing in Multnomah County, and Goose Hollow Family Shelter, one of only two shelters in Portland for families with children experiencing homelessness, and as part of a mobile team that works in homeless camps throughout Multnomah County.

YWCA empowers survivors through the Yolanda Project, which is a unique, ongoing program that diverts pressure away from our region’s emergency shelter system by working with survivors of domestic violence at risk of becoming homeless to avoid a stay in an emergency shelter and obtain safe, stable housing for themselves and their families. Through this program: we advocate on behalf of—and alongside—survivors with public and private landlords who are wary of offering housing to survivors with minimal resources; inform survivors of their legal housing rights and, when appropriate, connect them with pro bono legal services in our community; and administer rapid re-housing and eviction prevention grants for survivors who need a small amount of assistance to obtain or retain safe housing.

Wraparound supports available to DV services participants include: parent-child therapeutic services, vital basic needs assistance for safe parent and child/ren, housing assistance, and educational trainings offering relevant topics such as landlord/tenant laws, effects of trauma, implicit biases, personal financial budgeting and career exploration, communication and conflict resolution.

Our DV Services receive referrals from all six of the greater Portland area's community shelters and we work closely with private and public landlords to ensure survivors' housing stability. In addition to advocacy with landlords and affordable housing providers, our advocates provide a broad range of housing supports to meet clients' needs. These supports may include small client assistance grants to prevent eviction or assist with rent, referrals to temporary emergency shelter, motel vouchers for survivors needing a safe place to stay while obtaining long-term housing, and supportive services within the Y-Share housing program, which provide self-run, Oxford style, medium-¬to-long-¬term permanent shared housing for survivors and their children as they recover from violence and abuse.

We operate as part of a collaborative community of support. YWCA ensures that community partners are aware of our services and that we share referral connections with them. Our partners at Gateway Center, Home Forward, Call to Safety, and the six shelters within the region refer survivors to YWCA for DV advocacy and housing needs. Approximately one third (28%) of DV survivors seeking services from the Gateway Center were seeking to change their housing situation. The majority of those clients are referred to our co¬-located Yolanda Project advocates.