We followed up on an urgent message we received earlier this week from Danielle, living when we reached her at Safe Embrace, a local domestic abuse treatment center. “My children and I (along with other women and women with children) are being thrown out out with nowhere to go after 90 days of being in here,” Danielle wrote. “If somebody could please reach out to me, so I (we) can tell our story and let the public exactly know what we’re going through and exactly what we’ve been told. PLEASE!”
“They do tell you you have 90 days, no extensions, maybe circumstances for a few days or something like that,” Danielle explained in a follow up phone call. “I actually stayed in a weekly for a couple of months until there was room in here, which I paid for myself, I worked at Tesla and just kind of did that until I was able to come in here,” she said.
She’s since changed jobs several times, and started a new one with a temp agency this week that pays $18 an hour, but she still can’t afford any place in Reno right now, including a weekly, while her time at Safe Embrace is coming to an end.
Danielle confirmed Tuesday night she’s been told today would be her last official day, and that Safe Embrace said it would pay for her for two nights at a hotel, with the weekend and the week after totally uncertain mow.
She says there has been staff turnover including with leadership at the domestic abuse treatment center recently, which has created communication problems. Previous staff told her they wouldn’t allow her and her three kids to be unhoused, but now she says trying to communicate with the new staff has been “frustrating.” We emailed Safe Embrace for an interview about this situation but after responding they were willing to do so, while mentioning their confidentiality policy, we did not hear back. Their About Us has TBDs in several key positions including for sexual violence advocate.
“They give you resources to help yourself with housing,” Danielle explained. “So I signed up for rapid rehousing and I qualified. Now, this was just a week ago. But we don't know how long it's going to be to wait… “ Her rapidly shifting job situation created additional problems, but she says she’s not alone in not knowing where to live after her allotted time with Safe Embrace. “There's another woman with actually four kids that lives here and she has a couple more weeks. And it's gonna be the same thing with her. And another woman she's been working and, there's nowhere for her to go either. ”
One Safe Embrace resident wrote us she was also on waiting lists for housing after her stay but that nothing was opening up for her either with her time quickly running out. She said she is on the waiting list for three programs, transitional housing, rapid rehousing and their shelter house, but that all are still full. She said she’s been told the Our Place shelter for women and families is full as well.
The mother of four wrote us saying she only had a week left. She said she now regretted leaving her abuser. She said she feels the stay is too short as well, and she needs more time to sort her future. She says staff has also been stingy with cleaning supplies.
Several women who reached out to Our Town Reno said the help felt short of their expectations. Safe Embrace agreed to an interview, but then didn’t write back.
Danielle says she’s been told she can’t get into another domestic abuse center either, because her incident is now more than 90 days old. Applying for her own housing has led nowhere either, as she says she has a prior eviction on her record. “You know, you have to make double the amount and what not. I have an eviction that's like five years old and basically it's open closed, like, ‘oh no, we won't take you,’ unless I'm not honest about it. But I'm not gonna lie about anything. Like this is what's happened. I have one in 2016 and they basically shut the door and they don't take us.”
She has no vehicle as she sold a truck she had to afford a weekly in Reno until a spot opened up for her at Safe Embrace. She was referenced to go there from another domestic abuse center in San Diego, which transferred her due to her extended ties in this area.
Danielle used to live in Reno five years ago and worked for a while for Volunteers of America at the women’s shelter. The father of her kids lives in the area, as does his family, and her own mom and sister. The father has been keeping the youngest child during the week as Safe Embrace doesn’t allow kids to stay unattended. She says having family here as helped but not as much as she hoped for, and has also created new problems.
Danielle wanted to get an extra 30 days or at least two more weeks at Safe Embrace to have enough money to move in a weekly again, as she said she’s also still waiting for her last check from her previous job.
When she first arrived at Safe Embrace, she felt it might be a turning point, “but now with everything kind of being pulled from underneath us, it's frustrating,” she said. “Can you just give me a couple more weeks? Like I just need a couple weeks to get a new check from this new job,” she pleaded. “I just feel as though there should be a little bit more leniency and they should see, they should take a case by case into what's going on with people. It's not like I'm just sitting around, not working, not trying.”
She was unhoused previously at the start of the pandemic in San Diego after she and her partner lost jobs, and then when they got jobs again she thought they were on their way to better times there, but the partner she was with got violent again.
“She was very abusive to me and my children. That's why me and her got into a physical altercation is because she put her hands on my daughter,” she said. “And so when I confronted her about it, we began to fight and she actually gashed my whole eye open. I had a black eye and a busted lip. The police were called by one of our neighbors... The kids got three outfits. I grabbed my German Shepherd and jumped in the car and I haven't looked back. I was in a domestic violence shelter where CPS came and you know questioned the kids, questioned me… They went ahead and pressed charges against her and she was actually arrested and apprehended for child abuse and child neglect, I believe, or I don't know the exact charges.”
The shelter in San Diego then transferred her to Safe Embrace. “I was like,’ okay, sounds good. And I did that. But it's just been trudging through mud. It's just hard,” she said. Her kids wake up early every week day to go to school and catch the bus and she breaks down in tears talking about their own fears about what’s ahead. “They're just, they're really great kids. And they try so hard. And they're like, ‘mom, where are we gonna go?’ I'm like, ‘I don't know.’” And they're like, ‘mom, please, not another shelter. But I don't even have that to offer them.”