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I want to push for housing dignity and rights when it comes to vouchers. Particularly Emergency Housing Vouchers for Survivors of Domestic Violence and families who have experienced homelessness/housing injustice. There should be separate Trauma Informed Applications for people who have suffered trauma (and homelessness is traumatic).

The CoC assisted me in getting me one of the Emergency Housing Vouchers that were made available during Covid. They were made special so that Domestic violence could get one of these vouchers and find a home. I was sent tons of paperwork to fill out and then once I was approved she sent me even more paperwork. There were about 40 pages, and this is where I have an issue, every page implied something negative about me, the renter. It made me feel like the housing authority was assuming I'm a bad person. The paperwork
wanted me to sign over the rights to look at my bank account, to talk to just about every person I’ve ever met, twice, and was filled with direct threats to take away my housing and my assistance should I break one of the many rules it listed. To us survivors of domestic violence who have just left an abusive relationship, a relationship where our lives are controlled, where we do not have privacy, where our actions and intentions are questioned constantly, this all felt extremely invasive and triggering.
Often, for those of us who faced homelessness due to fleeing domestic violence, getting into a home should mean that we will finally have a say over our own lives, finally be truly free to make decisions without being second guessed, and it should be a time that we are allowed feel safe so we can focus on healing and making a better life for our children and ourselves. But nobody can feel safe knowing that, at any moment, they could lose their housing based on the whim of a stranger. Living under the constant threat that your housing could be taken away from you by a stranger is not conducive to healing, and frankly, can be retraumatizing. Those who oversee programs meant to bring aid to those in need would do well to realize that through the eyes of a domestic violence survivor, the world is an entirely different place.
Most survivors of DV have just escaped an environment where they were constantly accused of doing things that they did not do, or of having intentions that they did not have. So to hand them a pile of papers filled with a hundred different things they could do or not do that would allow everything to be taken away from them again, their housing, their assistance, their security, their safety, the promises they made to their children, is absolutely deplorable and in no way serves the true purpose of EHVs.
That is the way that it felt to me.
So I went to Tri-Cap, who had a place in their housing program for me. I was asked to only fill out maybe three or four pages of forms. So different that the piles of forms I received when trying to utilize the EHV.
We were assisted in obtaining housing within I want to say a month or so. Such a huge difference. So for EHV, as far as for survivors of domestic violence, people really need to be more trauma informed when it comes to the kind of questions that are being asked and the way that they are being asked, the amount of control that is being demanded, and the overall tone that can come off as not only unwelcoming, but as if the survivor has ill intentions and not to be trusted. It was very triggering and it put me into panic mode worrying that I could lose my home again very easily based on the whim of a person that I have no reason to trust.