There’s something both positive and negative to take from Tuesday’s Free Lance story on Emmaus House reaching full capacity, and it indicates we as a community must look ahead and plan for expanding our offering of such transitional housing.
After opening in October 2006, the shelter for battered women and children had been operating at 80 percent to 90 percent capacity. For the past three weeks, it’s been completely full, with all nine bedrooms occupied and 17 children currently staying there.
This not only shows the immense need in San Benito County for the shelter – which had been in planning stages for more than a decade, undoubtedly leaving countless residents without such help for years – but it also points to the inevitability that the current Emmaus House won’t be enough some day.
Most alarming, the shelter’s frequent and consistent use underscores that we as a community might have a serious problem with domestic violence.
“Domestic violence is, without a doubt, an issue for this community,” Hollister Police Chief Jeff Miller said in an interview this week with reporter Alice Joy.
The uplifting part of this week’s story, though, is the mere existence of Emmaus House – that women and children with nowhere else to turn can go to this safe haven, that advocates for building the shelter certainly hadn’t underestimated its necessity.
Yet, we must look ahead. And we must do so while fighting this cultural affliction and minimizing its potentially poisonous assault on our families.
The shelter, meanwhile, hasn’t had to turn away anyone, and its executive director, Dale Yarmuth, vowed this week the facility would continue that trend. He noted how Emmaus House staff encourage women to stay at least a month, but that with limited capacity they must leave within three months.
Yarmuth advocated in the story that San Benito County needs more transitional and affordable housing to offer a broader set of options to women. He’s right. We do and will need more of this housing and we’ll need it sooner than later.
With the building moratorium set to expire in December 2008, we’re bracing for a growth spurt that likely, without expanded offerings, would eventually create a widening gap between the supply and demand of these crucial offerings.
Yarmuth said there’s no immediate emergency, as Emmaus House has enough staff and volunteers to address the current level of need. But he and the group’s board of directors are already examining the future with a possibility of adding another building.
The board is wise to examine it and examine it seriously. Knowing what we know now, we certainly can’t afford another 10 years without an expansion.
