The Bag She Packed and Never Used
She had a bag packed under the bed for six months before she ever touched it again. Every time she thought about leaving, one question stopped her: leave to where? A shelter with no open bed, a car with two kids in the back seat, or a street that felt more dangerous than the home she already knew.
This is the choice sitting underneath a number most people never hear. Domestic violence and homelessness are not two separate crises in Los Angeles. For thousands of women, they are the same crisis wearing two names.
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The Real Link Between Domestic Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles
When people talk about why someone becomes homeless, they usually think about rent, job loss, or eviction. Those causes are real. But in Los Angeles County, a huge share of unhoused women point to a different reason entirely: they left, or tried to leave, someone who was hurting them.
A 2023 Urban Institute survey found that 44 percent of unhoused women in LA County named domestic violence as the main reason they lost their housing. Statewide, one in five unhoused women say they fled their home specifically to escape a violent partner. That is not a side effect of homelessness. For a huge number of women, it is the cause of it. The connection runs both directions, too. A woman without money, a car, or a place to go is far more likely to stay with an abuser longer than she wants to, simply because leaving means trading one danger for another kind of danger, the danger of having nowhere safe to sleep.
Here is the part that should make every Angeleno angry: even when a survivor finally decides to leave, the help she needs often is not there. Los Angeles City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky has said that only about 10 percent of domestic violence survivors who seek shelter in LA are actually able to get a bed. Nine out of ten women who work up the courage to call for help are told there is no room.
The math has only gotten worse. In the 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, nearly 5,700 people experiencing homelessness said domestic or intimate partner violence contributed to their situation, a 43 percent jump from the year before and more than double the number from 2020. At the same time, funding for the shelters built to catch these survivors has been getting cut, not increased. One local shelter serving women and children lost its federal grant and was left with a funding shortfall of more than $300,000, even while it was still caring for a dozen women and 25 children who had nowhere else to go.
Part of why this keeps happening is that Los Angeles runs two separate systems, one for domestic violence services and one for general homeless services, and they were never built to work together. A survivor often has to explain her situation over and over to different agencies, filling out paperwork about her trauma while she is still living out of a car or a hotel room paid for by a voucher that runs out in six weeks. Read more in LA’s housing crisis is trapping domestic violence survivors from Westside Current.
You Can Be the Reason Someone Doesn’t Go Back
You do not have to run a shelter to change this story. You can be the reason one woman does not go back to a dangerous situation because she truly had nowhere else to turn.
If someone in your life hints that things are not safe at home, the most powerful thing you can do is simply believe them and give them a number to call, not a lecture. Save the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233, in your phone right now. Save Jenesse Center’s 24-hour LA hotline, 800-479-7328, too. You may never need to use them yourself, but you may be the reason someone else does. If you want to do more, leave a comment on this article naming a local resource you personally trust. LA Connexion is building a community resource guide from the ground up, and a comment from a real Angeleno carries more weight than any list we could write alone.
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📌 Community Resources
📍 National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-7233 (24/7, confidential)
📍 Jenesse Center
24-hour hotline (800) 479-7328
📍 House of Ruth
Domestic violence shelter and support services, LA County
📍 211 LA
Dial 2-1-1 (housing, emergency shelter, and crisis referrals)
📍 LA Connexion
Our free community resource guide, (323) 200-9096
📌 Join LA Connexion
Domestic violence and homelessness are not abstract policy terms, they are what is keeping someone’s neighbor, coworker, or cousin from feeling safe tonight. LA Connexion exists to connect people like her to the resources, and the community, that can actually get her to safety. If this story affected you, join us. Tell us what you know. Help us hold this city accountable to the women it keeps failing to shelter.
📞 (323) 200-9096
If today’s story on domestic violence and homelessness stayed with you, know that our paid Substack subscribers are what lets LA Connexion keep digging into stories like this one instead of moving on to the next headline. Join them here.
And if you own a business in this city, know that the survivors and families in this story are often closer to your doors than you realize. A community that trusts you starts with being known as a business that shows up for its most vulnerable neighbors, not just its paying customers. If you want to talk about what that could look like, reach out at laconnexions23@gmail.com or (323) 200-9096.