Orange County does not have a domestic violence shelter. But ‘Safe Homes’ are coming.
Chahnaz Kebaier was picking up her children from Mary Scroggs Elementary School in Chapel Hill’s Southern Village neighborhood when her husband shot her multiple times in 2012.
The 40-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill researcher was involved at the time in a divorce, custody and child-support battle with her husband, Ali Cherfaoui. She told a friend that she feared Cherfaoui would kill her.
On May 25, about 30 minutes before school ended, he did.
On Tuesday, the “kiss-and-go lane” where Kebaier died was the backdrop for launching a $1.125 million campaign to provide safe homes for people escaping domestic violence.
The nonprofit Compass Center for Women and Families, based in Chapel Hill, already has raised $585,000 toward that goal, development director Ashley Ahlers said.
The goal of the Safe Homes, New Lives campaign is to lease six apartments over the next three years and temporarily house at least 300 people a year, Compass Center officials said. Each apartment will be fully furnished and include utilities, food and other services.
It will be the first time that Orange County offers emergency shelter to local victims of domestic violence in over 30 years.
Shelter for domestic violence victims
Nonprofit agencies and law enforcement now refer people fleeing domestic violence to the Durham Crisis Response Center, Interact of Wake County and other shelters in surrounding counties for emergency housing. The coronavirus outbreak has made the problem more acute, because shelters now limit how many people they house together.
While many nonprofits are using hotel rooms for shelter, it doesn’t give people enough time to get on solid financial footing and find other housing, and it can be expensive.
For longer-term housing needs, the Compass Center started a micro-grant program earlier this year to provide families with up to $5,000 to help pay moving expenses, security deposits, and rent and utilities for up to 120 days.
“We can help connect you to shelters in other communities or we can put you in a hotel for a night or two, but knowing that we can’t meet this need is so hard on the staff over and over and over again,” executive director Cordelia Heaney said. “The thought of someone on our hotline being able to answer the phone and say, yes, we can do that for you, is amazing. It’s such a game-changer.”
In Orange County, 2,561 victims of domestic violence sought help between July 2018 and June 2019, including 252 people who needed emergency housing, according to statistics from the N.C. Council for Women and Youth Involvement.
The number of calls was up 47% since 2015-16, when 1,742 calls were reported in Orange County and 162 people sought emergency shelter. Since Kebaier was killed, the number of people calling about domestic violence in Orange County has grown nearly 69%.
COVID-19 has only exacerbated the need in many counties around the state, because the shutdown trapped victims at home with their abusers and further sapped their confidence that they could make it financially on their own, advocates have said. Others fear being exposed or their children being exposed to the virus if they seek emergency shelter, they said.
The Compass Center reported 582 contacts with domestic violence clients in February, before the outbreak gained steam. By April, that number had steadily risen to 965 client contacts, the center reports.
Community problem, solutions
Vimala Rajendran, a Chapel Hill chef and restaurant owner, donated $1,000 to the Safe Homes, New Lives campaign Tuesday from her Curryblossom Foundation.
Rajendran, an honorary campaign co-chair, was a client at the The Women’s Center — a forerunner to Compass Center — for two years before leaving her husband of 16 years in 1994. She cooked donation-based community dinners out of her home to support her three children until, in June 2010, she opened Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe.
The nearest shelter when she left was in Durham, Rajendran said, but it was not an option because she lacked a car and wanted to keep her children in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
“When I left, the entire neighborhood, and even beyond the neighborhood, communities came together to gather books for my children, clothes, essentials, because we left with just the clothes on our back,” she said. “The one missing link at that time (was a local shelter), and we started staying at the homes of friends.”
A local shelter might have helped Kebaier, too, said Marilyn Jacobs Preyer, co-chair of the Safe Homes, New Lives campaign. While she had a domestic violence protective order, her husband showed up at her home before the shooting at the school, forcing Kebaier to seek refuge in a neighbor’s home, she said.
“Like many in our community, I read about this tragedy and wondered why she could not find safety in our prosperous town,” Jacobs Preyer said. “I was surprised to learn that Orange County did not have a shelter for domestic violence, and to this day, many folks still assume that there is one somewhere over there, hidden somewhere.”
She reached out to a UNC School of Social Work researcher to study the county’s domestic violence needs, Jacobs Preyer said. That work led to the creation of the Compass Center and the Safe Homes, New Lives campaign, she said.
“Domestic violence is a community problem and requires a group solution,” Jacobs Preyer said. “We lose a piece of our humanity each time a tragedy like this happens, but we can become more human through our action and our response.”
How to help
For more information about the Safe Homes, New Lives campaign, including donation links and information for landlords who may have apartments to rent, go to compassctr.org/safehomes.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 4:52 PM.
