Federal Funding for Safe Havens Not Tracked

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(WOMENSENEWS)--As part of the Obama administration's federal stimulus program, the Justice Department's Office of Violence Against Women is passing along $43 million to states and nonprofits to help them fund transitional housing for people trying to escape domestic violence.

The Web site of the Office of Violence Against Women, or OVW, makes it easy to see where that money is going.

So far, the office has already passed along all $43 million in transitional housing awards to nonprofit organizations and states. The Rose Brooks Centers of Kansas City, Kan., for instance, received $184,910 and Michigan's Department of Human Services got $2 million.

Two other federal agencies with potentially much more money to spend on the same purpose--the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, and the Department of Health and Human Services or HHS--are more difficult to monitor. That's particularly true of HHS.

HUD has $1.5 billion in recovery money allocated for emergency shelters and $1.6 billion allocated for homeless assistance.

http://www.womensenews.org/story/domestic-violence/100105/federal-funding-safe-havens-not-tracked