In January 2025, Governor Newsom unveiled his California Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget proposal. While he celebrated a more positive outlook for the state’s coffers, one item was noticeably absent: funding for Crime Victim Services.
In 2024, survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, human trafficking, child abuse, elder abuse, and other crimes, as well as their advocates, rallied at the capitol multiple times, shared their stories with their representatives, and demanded that the state not balance the budget on their backs. Time and time again, they were told that it was a “bad budget year.”
Because of the looming cuts, keeping a shelter bed open now means sacrificing an advocate for sexual assault survivors in the emergency room, axing the attorney who helps battered mothers file for an emergency restraining order or slashing the social worker who counsels an abused child. -Sonja Sharp, LA Times
These cuts will harshly impact those least able to secure services elsewhere — our most vulnerable, historically marginalized, and underserved communities. – Erik Nararenco, District Attorney of Ventura County, Ventura County Star
In the end, the California Assembly and Senate, with bipartisan, majority support, agreed on a budget that included ongoing funding for crime victim services. Unfortunately, the Governor ultimately passed one-time funding, creating an uncertain future for rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, human trafficking case workers, children’s advocacy centers, legal services, and so many others who support survivors of crime.
Survivors should not have to retell their stories for others to believe that Crime Victim Services funding is essential.
Elvira Herrera, Sacramento, CA, May 30, 2024
“The staff at the rape crisis center lifted me from the ground where I was left to die. I had an advocate accompany me during the court process and having her next to me made me feel safe and not alone…Without support from that advocate and others like her involved in my case, I would have never been able to overcome the horrific violence I experienced.” – Elvira Herrera, Survivor, OC Register
The lack of inclusion in the budget and forcing survivors and advocates to plead their case to receive it, year after year, continues to exacerbate the trauma they experienced, leads to unreliable job stability, and increases questions on whether or not survivors in the future will be able to receive the same level of support.
“While debates ensue about whether the federal government or the State should bear the responsibility for ensuring consistent VOCA funding levels, it is ultimately the survivors and their families who will pay the steep price of inaction.” – Kay Buck, CEO & Executive Director Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (Cast), Capitol Weekly
In 2024, Crime Victim Services funding received overwhelming support from across California as survivors and advocates continued to reiterate the importance of funding these essential services. Articles in Cal Health Report (here and here), Ethnic Media Services, the Sacramento Bee (here and here), the Press-Telegram, Stateline, Stanislaus County (here and here), Ventura, San Jose, San Fransisco, Santa Barbara, Fresno, San Diego, Yolo County, Santa Clara, and more across California reiterated the danger survivors would find themselves in should Governor Newsom and the state legislature not step in.
However, federal cuts to the Crime Survivors Fund and a slow-moving Congress continue to put Californian survivors in precarious situations.
“Gender-based violence is a cause and consequence of homelessness, and this ruling will further trap people who are homeless, including survivors, in cycles of poverty and housing insecurity.” – The National Network to End Domestic Violence and other advocacy groups said after the Grants Pass ruling, Mother Jones
The federal decline in funding for crime victim services is well known, and the Governor is aware that his final 2025 budget only granted one-year funding. Additionally, the state’s own Crime Victims Fund, signed into law in 2024 to bridge services through federal cuts, will take years to mature.
The failure to include bridge funding to support survivors of crime in the Governor’s January 2025 budget proposal leaves hundreds of thousands of survivors behind in California.
“If the governor does not sign that budget for ongoing funding, what we are going to have is we’re going to have a minimum of 400,000 victims in California that go unserved that end up on the streets, that end up getting retargeted and re-victimized. That’s what’s going to happen.” Sandra Henriquez, CEO of ValorUS®, abc10 (KXTV)
