Jeff Landry’s budget includes cuts to Louisiana’s domestic violence shelter funding

by Julie O’Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
February 21, 2025

Gov. Jeff Landry has reduced state funding for domestic violence prevention programs by $7 million in his budget proposal for the second year in a row. Survivor advocates said losing the money could close shelter beds and end outreach services.

“It would have an almost immediate and catastrophic effect,” Mariah Stidham Wineski, executive director for the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said in an interview Thursday.

Wineski said her organization received $7 million more from the state in 2023 and 2024 and distributed the money to shelters and local anti-domestic violence groups to expand their programming. 

It was used to add 229 new shelter beds statewide for domestic violence survivors for a total of a little over 600 spaces. The money also opened 11 new outreach offices where people can seek counseling, support groups and legal assistance.

Landry also proposed cutting $7 million from domestic violence programs last year, but legislators added the money back into the state spending plan a few months later. Wineski hopes lawmakers will do the same this year during their legislation session that starts in April.

Domestic violence is one of the largest public safety issues facing Louisiana. In 2020, the state had the fifth highest female homicide rate in the country, and more than half of women who were victims that year were killed by an intimate partner, according to the Violence Policy Center.

A 2021 investigation by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor concluded the state desperately needed more shelter beds for domestic violence survivors. At the time, Louisiana’s 16 shelters had a total of 389 spaces and an average of 2,700 unmet requests for shelter beds every year.

Thanks to the additional money, Wineski said shelters got the number of unmet requests down to 1,400 annually – a historic low for Louisiana. 

“The state for the past two years has funded something that works,” she said.

Wineski said the loss in state funding would come at a particularly vulnerable time for domestic violence services, which are also at risk of losing federal support.

The federal grants that help fund domestic violence services in Louisiana have shown up on lists of spending that President Donald Trump might cut, Wineski said. The state’s domestic violence organizations were also blocked from accessing any federal funding for two days in January when the administration put a wide-reaching freeze on federal spending in place. 

“This is a level of funding uncertainty that [domestic violence shelters] have not seen in recent history,” Wineski said. “Now is really not the time to be losing state dollars.”

In total, Wineski said between 40 and 45% of the money her organization receives every year comes from federal or state funds. 

Since taking office last year, Landry has said public safety would be his top priority. While he has proposed cuts to domestic violence services, the governor has increased funding for other public safety services dramatically over the last year.

This year, Landry and state lawmakers agreed to spend close $100 million on new youth jails and prisons. His budget proposal for fiscal year 2025-26, released Thursday, includes $39.5 million more in funding for the Department of Public Safety of Correction from the current year.

At a budget hearing Thursday, state Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, said she will seek to restore the $7 million in domestic violence response funding.

“We should not be decreasing funding to domestic violence shelters,” she said.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

The post Jeff Landry’s budget includes cuts to Louisiana’s domestic violence shelter funding appeared first on lailluminator.com