A federally funded collaboration involving Pulaski County and a nonprofit aims to aid families affected by domestic violence, the county's community services director said Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded a $171,440 grant to the county for a new project to provide housing assistance for domestic-violence survivors and their children.
Planned in cooperation with Women & Children First, which runs an emergency shelter in Little Rock, the initiative expands services in a year when advocates fear a rise in domestic incidents because of strains from the coronavirus pandemic.
The program is designed to help domestic-violence victims transition to "a new home" as soon as possible, director Fredrick Love said.
Love said the idea for the project grew out of an awareness of ongoing problems with domestic violence in Pulaski County throughout the years, while housing vouchers weren't always available for those affected.
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The program will "ensure that families can get back to some sort of normalcy, after they've been victims," he added.
Grant funding will cover housing vouchers for up to 20 Pulaski County families from 90 days to a year, as well as covering a few smaller expenses such as transportation.
Women & Children First will distribute the vouchers to recipients, Love said. Its executive director, Angela McGraw, couldn't immediately be reached on Tuesday.
Last month, she told the newspaper that the center had experienced a drop in call numbers since lockdowns related to the coronavirus outbreak began, a decline she viewed as an ominous portent for the year to come.
People in abusive home situations may be "isolated even more than they are usually being isolated at this point ... I'm sure abusers are using this to their advantage," she said.
An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette review of Little Rock Police Department data around that same time showed a slight dip in the number of arrests for domestic offenses in March, relative to the previous two years.
This is not Pulaski County's first foray into housing services. The state's most populous county also administers similar HUD grants to help house people with disabilities and for some other groups, such as people with HIV and AIDS.
County officials will now complete paperwork and contracts to finalize the award for the domestic-violence project, which likely will start up around July, said Love, who also serves as a state representative.
The Quorum Court also must recognize and appropriate the funds, though that step is a formality in most cases.
Information for this article was contributed by William Sanders of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 05/13/2020