A Southern California shelter that offers services to women facing domestic violence and substance abuse may be closing its doors after federal funding that the shelter depended on was canceled.
Mary’s Mercy Center in San Bernardino offers a variety of support services including food, clothing, support services and transitional living facilities for displaced men, women and children.
“I knew I had to force myself to leave, for my children and I, for our safety,” said a mother at the shelter who did not wish to be identified.
The woman said she and her three children endured both verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her ex-husband.
“Where it’s happening in front of them and they’re being attacked and neglected, I knew I needed to do something because my children are my number one priority,” she told KTLA’s Shelby Nelson. “I realized something was wrong with me that I stayed for so many years and I asked God just to help me.”
After eight years of enduring the abuse, she found the strength to leave and was accepted into Mary’s Haven, a program that offers shelter to displaced women with young children.
“A lot of the women who come here are coming from a very difficult situation,” explained Dan Flores, the executive director of Mary’s Mercy Center. “They are survivors of domestic violence.”
For Barbara Bennett, a mother of four children, she struggled with substance abuse.
“After my relationship with my son’s dad, I was stuck on drugs for six years straight,” Bennett said.
After being convicted and serving jail time, she said it was the wake-up call she needed to turn her life around. She and her children have been living at Mary’s Haven as Bennett works to rebuild her life and provide stability for her children.
“They live here full time so we provide housing for all the moms and kids,” Flores said. “We provide necessities from clothing to bedding to food and also offer a lot of wrap-around services such as counseling, supportive services, therapy, and preschool for the kids.”
However, as of April 1, Flores said they were notified through email that the funding they receive from the federal government would be cut off retroactively from March 24.
Flores said the grant cutoff arrived three months earlier than scheduled, leaving the facility in a critical bind as 10 mothers with 24 children are being housed at the facility and many of them have nowhere else to go.
“A lot of us in the nonprofit sector, as we see what happens at a federal level, we are wondering whether or not those grants are going to be made available next fiscal year,” Flores said.
For the women who said they’ve been stuck in survival mode for so long, Mary’s Mercy Center gave them invaluable support such as job and financial training and a second chance to rebuild and better their lives.
“Since I’ve been, here I’ve graduated high school,” Bennett said. “I’m in college now.”
“It’s not just scary that we’ll lose a home and somewhere stable for our kids,” said the unidentified mother. “For a lot of us women and mothers, we needed this.”
Flores said they’re now scrambling to find a solution as they work with other nonprofits to find any resources they could receive to fill the funding gap.
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