Centering Our Voices: Experiences of Violence Among Homeless African American Women

Abstract

Women experiencing homelessness who are also survivors of violence require uniquely tailored programs to accommodate complex needs. To understand how violence shaped the lives of formerly homeless African American women, an instrumental case study design and community-based participatory research approach was utilized in this qualitative study. Focus group interviews with graduates ( N = 40) from a long-term transitional housing program were conducted. Using thematic analysis, identified themes included: cycles of violence, violence in the community, relationships with children, and coping with violence. These themes illustrated survivors’ growth through supportive programming and highlighted services dedicated to empowering women who have experienced violence.

Examining second-stage shelters: insights into housing instability and tailored support for IPV survivors

“…Disabled women, 2SLGBTQ women, Indigenous women, women of color, and new immigrant women encountered additional obstacles in accessing second-stage shelters. Cultural needs, accessibility, and language barriers posed challenges, as not all spaces accommodated these diverse requirements [19,21,26,29,30]. The protective measures implemented to ensure safety inadvertently created difficulties for certain groups of women in accessing shelter services.…”

“…Articles in this review discussed the importance of providing individualized case management support targeted to what survivors wanted [13,18,20,22,24,25,30]. Supportive educational programming was made available by many second-stage shelters related to job/educational assistance, legal services, childcare support, housing support, counseling, transportation, referrals to other agencies, safety planning, food and food programs, and parenting classes [13,18,29,30,[19][20][21][22][23][26][27][28]. Second-stage shelters provided specialized services, including survivor-centered programming with expertise in gender-based violence, availability of counseling services, and safety planning [13,28].…”

“…Some researchers were critical of the mandatory nature of programming that still exists within shelter systems and was almost always identified by women as a barrier [13,21,[23][24][25]29]. Not all women accessing secondstage shelters require the same type of support or information, and some groups, such as Indigenous peoples [26] and African American women [29], require unique and tailored programming.…”

Substance Misuse Themes Among Women Living in Transitional Housing

“…Women in different stages of healing can help each other move through this continuum of reconnection." Detailed methods describing the Nia Imani transitional housing treatment and model of care have been published (Deal et al, 2022;Dressel et al, 2020;Schmitt et al, 2021).…”

“…Nia Imani fully embodies a feminist approach to issues surrounding homelessness defined by Brown and Ziefert (1990), in using “the group as a context to help women through a healing process that progressively reconnects them to themselves and then to others. Women in different stages of healing can help each other move through this continuum of reconnection.” Detailed methods describing the Nia Imani transitional housing treatment and model of care have been published (Deal et al, 2022; Dressel et al, 2020; Schmitt et al, 2021).…”