One of the many resources needed when escaping domestic violence situations is safe, affordable housing. Seeing the need to support this vulnerable population, Bridges to Housing Stability used Federal HOME funds to purchase a transitional home for survivors of Human Trafficking and survivors of Domestic Violence. The unit, known as the Serenity House, is now occupied, allowing a household to experience peace and safety after a challenging period of instability and uncertainty.
If you or someone you know has experienced IPV/Domestic Violence please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or check out www.thehotline.org/ website for more information on how to get help. The National Domestic Violence Hotline also offers a chat option and text option on its website.
Additional resources for survivors can be found at:
HopeWorks of Howard County:
- 24-hour helpline number 410-997-2272
- Website: https://hopeworksofhc.org/
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
- Phone: 737-225-3150
- Website: https://ncadv.org/
Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence
- Phone: 301-429-3601
- Website: mnadv.org/
Bridges' Clients Who Experienced Domestic Violence:
Melissa
Melissa's long journey to Bridges to Housing Stability began more than a decade ago when virtually every aspect of her life seemed to be in ruin. Mired in an abusive long-term relationship, besieged by serious physical and emotional problems while trying to raise her then-young son, she finally left home for help from HopeWorks, the county’s domestic violence agency. She then moved into HopeWorks transitional housing, and then finally found permanent housing with Bridges to Housing Stability. The contrast between 2012 and 2023 is striking.
Now her son is a high school senior set to graduate in May with both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree. At 48, she has stable housing, co-parents with her ex in the way their child needs and deserves, is in better health, and has control over her depression, anxiety, and her life in general.
“I was under a lot of physical stress. My mental state was really poor,” she said. “I wasn’t sleeping.” She was being treated for cancer, she used food to help escape her anxiety, and her weight ballooned. She had never really had control of her own life, she said, and her ex did things like turning off the water heater, preventing her from driving anywhere, and blocking the refrigerator. Even as she recovered from cancer surgery, she walked with her son to the supermarket nearby and ate cold food at the tables within the supermarket.
The comprehensive help she got from Bridges was a godsend, she said. “It has been life-saving.” Danielle Winston, a Bridges Housing Advocate who has worked closely with Melissa for the past six years, agreed that the transformation has been dramatic. “This is a huge accomplishment for her and her family,” Winston said. Melissa is a client in Bridges’ Housing Stability Program, the agency’s only long-term supportive housing program. The program’s capacity is 22 clients at any one time.
Since she first came to Bridges, Melissa has received help learning to create a budget, paying her bills on time by using separate envelopes to keep money for different purposes, helping build good relations with landlords and neighbors, and making new friends all while advocating for herself and her son. She also got help from a mental health therapist, received Social Security Disability income, and is waiting for a Housing First Choice Voucher to help pay her rent long-term. She is proud to have substantially improved her credit score and credits Bridges’ financial literacy education with the improvement in her finances.
Melissa currently receives SNAP benefits, medical care for her ongoing cancer treatments, medical guidance for obesity, and back injuries from a fall. She had COVID-19 in 2021, she said, and was hospitalized. With the help of her supportive community, her ex was able to take care of their son while Melissa was hospitalized. “He started stepping up. He stopped drinking and focused on being present with our son in ways I never thought possible,” she said. He continues to help and be supportive.
Winston credits Melissa’s inner strength as another important reason for her progress. “She is a person who is determined to make her son proud,” Winston said. The key to keeping her chin up and moving forward, Melissa said, comes from within. “It is my faith in God,” she said, that has pulled her through the darkest of times, through the grief of child loss, and the death of her father this year.
“This year, I realized I’m not a failure. My heart is exactly where it needs to be to raise my son,” she said. In elementary school, her son was being bullied, but she got help from a fellow church member who got him a scholarship to a parochial school. Now, he plans to continue in college and become an engineer. “The people we were in the beginning were so broken, so helpless. I never knew what life could be like in a home of our own, but today I do,” she said. Now despite her cancer, “we are just a happy little family.”
Maria
The multi-pronged nightmare that enveloped Maria and her three children began long before the pandemic, with a years-long marriage to an abusive man who even blamed her for her son’s autism. That was followed by an eviction, cancer, long Covid-19, and long-term disability that knocked her out of a good government job. Now, thanks to years of help from Bridges to Housing Stability, she and her mostly grown children are living in a three-bedroom Columbia apartment and getting ready to move closer to family support in another state. It was a long, long road, filled with emotional potholes and problems.
Already beleaguered by unending abuse from her then-husband, the family was suddenly evicted, she said. They ended up in her in-law’s basement for a time. “It was a horrible situation.” She finally worked up the courage to overcome her fear of being on her own, and she took the kids and left, to another basement apartment across the street. Her husband forced his way in sometimes and the fights prompted neighbors to call the police on occasion, she recalled.
“I was just naïve and I didn’t know what to do. Nobody wanted to help us find an apartment,” she said, but eventually, she went to Hope Works, the Howard non-profit that works to help victims of domestic violence. She got a judicial restraining order for protection against her husband’s threats. She also visited the North Laurel Community Center and spoke with a social worker who steered her to Bridges, which changed her life. In May, 2017, she and her children moved into a three-bedroom condo operated by Bridges. She later finalized her divorce and was awarded full custody of her youngest child, to minimize contact with her former husband.
“Life improved, a lot,” she said. “Being with Bridges has been a blessing,” the 47-year old said. In addition to housing, Bridges has helped with food, school supplies, referrals for legal advice, and rental assistance while she waited for long-term disability payments to begin. “Without Bridges, I would have been homeless,” she added. Kristen Miller, a program manager with Bridges who has worked with Maria’s family, said she is one of the longest-term tenants the program has helped. “She’s great to work with,” Miller said. She reaches out when problems crop up, eagerly participates in Bridges’ educational programs, and “she’s always willing to help someone else. She’s been an ideal tenant,” Miller added.
Last year, Maria met a new, supportive partner, though he lost his restaurant job in the pandemic. She had just finished chemotherapy for her cancer, and then the whole family got Covid-19, but all survived. She still suffers from several symptoms of the virus, though. Her cancer is in remission but she is considered “high risk,” she said. “I couldn’t work for two years.” Still, she plans to get back to work and save money towards her own house. “I have three job offers,” the former electromechanical technician said. She can no longer do heavy lifting, but she has 22 years of experience in aerospace manufacturing. Her new boyfriend is also a blessing, she said, because he helps take care of her, and helps her set boundaries to avoid being taken advantage of. She’d done a lot of reading on abuse, she said, and on how to better protect herself.
Now her focus is on the future and emerging from what she considers a transitional phase of her life to once again becoming independent and self-sufficient. “I really want to keep getting better and better.”
Maggie
Maggie, a 42-year-old mother of two, has lived a roller-coaster style life these last few turbulent years, but thanks to help from Bridges and other Howard County organizations, she has finally achieved some stability. She has a three-bedroom condo apartment in Columbia, a used car, and two jobs.
“Right now, I’m in a better place, but it’s still not perfect,” she said.
The frightening downward spiral began as she struggled to escape domestic violence. When she and her husband separated in early 2020, she and her kids moved into a friend’s spare bedroom in Laurel. Within days, Maggie was laid off from her Washington job with a government contractor as the first wave of the COVID pandemic closed almost everything down. After a few months living with the friend, who was awaiting the birth of her own child and would need the spare bedroom for a nursery, Maggie and her family moved across the street to join another woman who offered to house them. She knew that situation would not last, though, and actively sought a way out.
“It was only me taking care of everything,” she said. “I lost everything. I felt so overwhelmed.” The family was sleeping on an air mattress for a while. She remained unemployed for a year, she said. But eight months later, her persistent and determined calling for help and filling out applications finally paid off. “I’d been calling everybody,” she said, but ultimately her children’s schoolteachers and counselors connected her with Help End Homelessness Howard County (HEHHC), a non-profit organization that managed rental homes for families earning very low income.
Kim Pace, manager of Bridges’ Housing Connections program, provided case management services for HEHHC’s tenants. She helped Maggie with move-in assistance as well as food resources, school supplies, household essentials, and financial help when needed. (In early 2022, HEHHC donated its program and rental homes to Bridges.) Maggie got a temporary job at her daughter’s elementary school. She hopes to become a para-educator and permanent school employee. She also works part-time at a local supermarket. Key to her success, Maggie said, was her willingness to reach out and sometimes even help others in a sudden jam.
“I keep in touch with everybody,” she said. “I’m thankful I’m the person that I am,” she added. “I have a lot of friends. People helped me. That’s how I survive. I always think about my kids. They need me. I have great kids,” she said. Pace continues to keep in touch with Maggie and monitors her progress. Things are coming along, she said. “She’s a very nice woman who is dedicated to the betterment of her family,” Pace said. “And she’s determined not to let her circumstances define her.”
Makita
To call Makita’s life difficult so far would be a vast understatement. After experiencing a fractured family growing up, abuse as a child, two former abusive husbands, and six children as an adult, the pandemic found her sleeping in her disabled car with her 6-year-old and pregnant with her sixth. “I dealt with abuse and domestic violence. I became homeless,” she said. Even after getting an apartment in Columbia, the chaos continued. Beset by post-partum depression after her youngest child was born and her second marriage failed, she felt alone and helpless.
“I had a breakdown,” she said. “I had to move and I had no help.” That stress landed her in inpatient psychiatric care for several weeks, while her children were cared for by relatives, until she could get back on track. Now, at 38, she is progressing, thanks to intensive help from Bridges for Housing Stability. She has a new apartment in Howard County from which she can walk to work. Her youngest, who just turned 2, is back with her, and she has Housing Advocate Danielle Winston and others at Bridges to rely on if she needs more help. “That’s why her story is such an amazing story,” Winston said. “She does have major accomplishments,” along with training from life skills programs like Getting Ahead, budgeting, setting goals and sticking to them, and getting a therapist or life coach, which is a major achievement in itself these days. Winston added. “I told her, anybody who went through what you went through would have had the same reaction.”
No one can overcome such daunting odds and misfortune alone, and Makita understands her progress. “I’m really thankful for Bridges.” Makita grew up in North Carolina and Maryland. Her older children are in the Howard County area, which is why she drove up to see them only to have her car break down. A cousin who lives in Howard could not take her in, and she couldn’t afford to fix the car. Thus began her latest travails. She did get help initially from Grassroots, Howard’s homeless shelter, which put her up in a motel for a few weeks. Her credit was bad, she said, which complicated things even more. She got an apartment in Columbia and stayed a year, but the landlord did not want her to remain and she had to move right after her baby was born in May, 2020, which sparked her mental health crisis.