Housing and Battered Women: Increasing Battered Women's Access to Federal Housing Programs

This paper is a brief advocacy guide on two sets of HUD proposed regulations issued in April and May 1999. Both sets of regulations involved directives urging public housing authorities to have preferences for victims of domestic violence. While the issue of the 1999 regulations is over for now, the paper is relevant by offering basic information about continuing issues such as why battered women would want to get in a housing program as soon as possible and how to advocate with public housing authorities in their annual and five-year planning processes. A sample letter to HUD also includes language about how important housing is for battered women. This paper is one of a series of policy and practice papers from the <i>Building Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence</i> initiative of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, a project of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.