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“With a county population of 2.6 million people, [experts estimate] we should have about 600 available beds total. We have 113. … We can fill that in a weekday,” said Norma Rodriguez of the Women’s Shelter of Hope. “We see two or three families on a weekend.”

Miami-Dade County runs two domestic violence shelters. Two others, The Lodge, a privately run shelter, and the nonprofit Women’s Shelter of Hope, are not operated by the county although funding filters to them through the county. The source of funding for all the shelters comes from the food and beverage taxes we all pay every time we have a meal out. The money then makes its way through the Domestic Violence Oversight Board and is finally allocated to the shelters.

Fortunately at Safe Space North, the hurricanes that ravaged South Florida last year downed only a few trees. Two other shelters were not so lucky. Safe Space South in South Miami-Dade was forced to cut its number of available beds almost in half due to damage from Katrina, and in the wake of Hurricane Wilma, the Women’s Shelter of Hope was forced to close completely. According to Rodriguez, the Women’s Shelter of Hope, the system has lost about 100 beds countywide.

Rodriguez’s shelter serves the entire city of Hialeah, and then some. After the hurricane took the roof off their shelter, they were forced to move current and new residents into hotels. Safe Space South is in a similar situation, operating without a permanent facility. The lack of funding is a problem but other outside factors have worsened the situation. Rodriguez says that part of what hinders a facility reopening is that, with about 250,000 total people displaced by the storm, shelter is scarce in general.

The South Florida housing boom has worsened matters. “We can’t even buy a property in good condition, or one that needs to be fixed up,” because of the “outrageous” price tags on property, Rodriguez said. “It’s an atrocious problem.”

More than a year later, both Safe Space South and Women’s Shelter of Hope remain at least partially unusable, and the organizations have been forced to relocate some new residents into area hotels and motels. While some hotels and motels have on occasion waived the charges, the donations are a temporary fix for the overall shortage.

With such problems, it’s hard to think about the national statistics: One of every two women will be battered in their lifetime. Eighty percent of their children will witness the abuse. Every nine seconds, a woman is domestically abused. According to Fryer, the shelters have seen an increase in the need for services this year.

While Miami-Dade County recorded a slight drop in per capita offenses – 14,474 reported incidents of domestic violence in 2005 – the state saw a 0.5 percent increase over 2004, according to the Florida Statistical Analysis Center of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The county still ranks highest in the state for reported domestic violence offenses.

And with the holidays around the corner, Fryer expects to see another increase. During times of stress like the holiday season and hurricanes, the shelters see an upsurge in those seeking refuge. With the holidays also comes increased alcohol consumption. Alone, drinking does not increase the risk of domestic violence, but it does lower the inhibitions of those already prone to abuse.

Shelter is so scarce that while the Women’s Shelter’s Rodriguez instructs her staff never to take victims into their own homes, to protect them from their abusers, the desire to is almost overwhelming.

Even with the severity of the shortage, both Fryer and Rodriguez strive to make clear that no victim is ever turned away. “We call on our neighbors,” Fryer said, referring to Broward County and even Keys shelters. “We don’t let victims out on the streets.”

Most recently Rodriguez was called by airport security to assist a woman who had been sleeping in the airport with her child to escape her abuser. “I’m a survivor of domestic violence,” Rodriguez said. “They say ‘spend a weekend with a family member’ but if the abuser knows the family.…”

Usually, Fryer and Rodriguez say, the police are the first line of communication between a victim and the shelters. Rodriguez has known police officers and firefighters to get victims into hotels for a night and even pay out-of-pocket to protect someone from an abuser.

“Our South Dade shelter was severely damaged; they had 23 beds before,” Fryer said. Fourteen of those were able to be moved to another already established shelter facility. Fryer says the county is working to renovate and reopen that shelter.

Down in South Dade, when the transitional housing shelter is full, they try to relocate victims to the already taxed Safe Space North, but inevitably some victims feel uncomfortable being so far away from their families and friends.

Victims can stay at Safe Space North and South for up to eight weeks of emergency shelter; after, they can then be placed in one of the county’s two “transitional housing” facilities. There, they can stay for up to one year and, as often occurs, be assisted in finding Section 8 housing on a permanent basis. The transitional housing spots for Safe Space North number 20 apartments.

Fryer explained that some women don’t want to leave abusive relationships because they think their standard of living will be dramatically reduced.

“Usually we get our referrals from police. They know [the abuser] is going to bond out in 24 hours,” Fryer said. “There are programs, advocates in the Miami and Miami Beach Police departments, Jewish women’s groups and others that refer people here. In my opinion there are not enough shelters,” Fryer said.

Safe Space North alone saw 329 new female clients last year, 331 children and six men. Men are not permitted to stay onsite because the shelter isn’t big enough to house two wings, so male clients are relocated to hotels, which the shelter pays for. At one time hotels and motels were donating a night’s stay to victims to help ease the burden on shelters through a program called Project Debbie. Those offers have since dried up, and the shelter’s tab is sometimes $385 per week or more.

Although the average stay is about six to eight weeks, says Fryer, those involved in the immigration process tend to stay longer owing to legal troubles. “We don’t care about a client’s immigration status,” said Fryer. But they do provide a host of referrals to services including legal, health, psychological, job placement, rehab and detox programs. One of the biggest components to the shelter is on-site counseling.

Safe Space North once had an in-house clinic provided by Jackson Memorial Hospital that not only tended to the various injuries resulting from domestic violence, but also offered other medical services, including immunizations and even diagnosing cancers. The shelter has managed to retain a triage nurse from the same hospital who can assess the severity of conditions and refer the patient to appropriate care, but the full-service clinic is dearly missed, Fryer says.

Some county officials have not turned a blind eye to the problem. Money has been trickling in from the County Commission and the Domestic Violence Oversight Board. Of the $1.5 million in grant money the Women’s Shelter of Hope has requested from various sources in recent months, the County Commission has granted a total of about $270,000 to be distributed over the next year. Most recently the shelter applied for a $100,000 grant from Baylor University in Texas, and was awarded $60,000 of it. Rodriguez credits her District 6 Commissioner Rebeca Sosa with providing an immense amount of support and “lots of money.” Nonetheless, the shelter system is forced to wait for the big grants to come in from the county and state.

Sosa says the whole county needs as much help as possible. “We don’t have enough people to work with the children,” she said. Although there are programs, facilities and support in place, Sosa is working to create a program called the Blue Ribbon Committee to train staff in police departments and other areas to work directly with children. Sosa is also pushing to get a new shelter open in her district.

“I am working on identifying a place that we can buy or an old building that can be fixed up – a hotel or motel to become a big shelter in my district,” Sosa said. “There was already an allocation of funds. I would like to see it happen in 2007.”

“They’re all trying to find solutions because that’s their job,” Rodriguez said. “Sometimes [commissioners] only like to work in their district, but Mayor [Carlos] Alvarez and our commissioner have worked a lot to help find a solution.”

But the support must go on. Rodriguez is currently “tearing apart” her office to make room for much-needed pro-bono family court and immigration legal help.

And this coming year the shelter will host a few charity events, one its annual Memory Dinner on May 19, the other a Masquerade Ball themed symbolically after the two faces created by the mask from The Phantom of the Opera. Rodriguez is proud to say she just got a calendar to place the events on. “Before they were just written on a piece of paper,” she said.

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com.

 Domestic Violence Crimes include: Murder, Manslaughter, Forcible Rape, Forcible Sodomy, Forcible Fondling, Aggravated Assault, Aggravated Stalking (1996-present), Simple Assault, Simple Stalking, Threat/Intimidation & Arson (1992-1995).

Source: The Florida Statistical Analysis Center of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement

 For help, call the 24-Hour Domestic Violence Hotline at 305-349-5888 or the state’s domestic violence hotline at 1-800-500-1119.