Heather Hofferbert was working to pull herself out of a cycle of addiction and abusive relationships when she moved into a domestic violence shelter in Pearl City run by Women in Need in 2023.
The only shelter on Oʻahu that allowed pets, Hofferbert was ecstatic to reunite with her dog, Trippy, and began to piece her life back together — taking online classes, tending sunflowers in the backyard and welcoming her preteen son for weekend visits.
But the stability she and the four other residents were building for themselves came to an end this summer when the shelter closed due to the loss of a federal grant.
“I know we were all thinking, ‘This house has been our saving grace,’” she said. “Everybody was just kind of scared like, ‘I don’t want to go back to the way I was living before.’”
Heather Hofferbert was able to get her life back on track while living at a domestic violence shelter in Pearl City run by Women in Need. The shelter closed this summer due to federal funding cuts and the residents were forced to relocate. (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat/2025)
The shelter is one of at least three domestic violence programs in Hawaiʻi that have lost millions in federal grants this year, including the state’s largest agency working on domestic violence intervention, the Domestic Violence Action Center.
The grants came from various offices, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services, and in at least two cases were terminated without explanation.
In Hawaiʻi, the loss of funds has meant less shelter space for survivors, fewer workers serving victims and the elimination of at least two programs targeted toward Native Hawaiian and Filipino survivors, who experience domestic violence at higher rates than other groups in the state.
Hawaiʻi has made $50 million in grants available for organizations affected by federal cuts. But with more than 200 nonprofits applying for relief, it’s unclear how much of the funding will go to domestic violence organizations. Lawmakers will announce the awardees on Nov. 20.
Lauren Khouri, a senior attorney at the National Women’s Law Center, which is representing various state domestic violence coalitions in lawsuits against the Trump administration, said that funding cuts put survivors at risk and threaten decades of progress that have been made by organizations working to reduce the impacts of domestic violence.
“Without federal funds,” she said, “the work being done to, in particular, prevent intimate partner violence, feed families in shelters fleeing abuse, help survivors file for legal protections, will just not exist at the scale it does today.”
The White House did not respond to emails seeking comment.
‘Their Safe Haven Is Closing Down’
The federal government has been the biggest funder of domestic violence services across the country for more than 30 years.
The passage of the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act in 1984 and the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 created dedicated funding streams to support domestic violence shelters and crisis organizations nationwide, as well as the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Last year, organizations in Hawaiʻi received just over $3.5 million from the Office on Violence Against Women, which is run by the Department of Justice and is one of the lead agencies for domestic violence grants. State organizations also receive funding from other agencies, like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Nearly 5,000 domestic abuse protection orders were filed in family courts across the state in fiscal year 2023. (Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2022)
But the Trump administration has attempted to prevent organizations across the country from using federal funds for initiatives seen as “promoting gender ideology,” advancing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and supporting undocumented immigrants.
The National Women’s Law Center sued the administration over these rules, and has so far prevailed in court. A judge for the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island issued a preliminary injunction last month that prevents the restrictions from being implemented on grantees.
But Trump administration officials are proposing sweeping cuts to grant programs in next year’s budget. The administration wants to slash the Department of Justice budget by nearly $1.2 billion, including $200 million in cuts to Violence Against Women Act grants. Programs on the chopping block include culturally specific services, LGBTQ services and a program aimed at educating men and youth to prevent domestic violence.
Programs in Hawaiʻi have already been impacted by cuts.
Hofferbert said she was told in July by the manager of the Women in Need shelter that she — and all the other shelter residents, including seven children — would have to move by the end of the month.
“She’s like, ‘OK, don’t freak out,” Hofferbert recalled. “But how do you tell women who have been through moving home to home, or been on the streets, or who’ve been looking for safety, that their safe haven is closing down without them freaking out?”
Hofferbert is now back in Hilo where she lives with a hānai aunt, but she worries about some of her former housemates who had difficulty adjusting to life without the support of the shelter. (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat/2025)
Women in Need had to end the lease on the house after the Department of Housing and Urban Development terminated the group’s $340,000 two-year grant without explanation earlier this year, said Mary Scott-Lau, founder of Women in Need.
The organization managed to help all of the residents relocate. But the loss of the grant was devastating, Scott-Lau said.
Hofferbert is back in Hilo, where she is from, living with a hānai aunt. She feels she made enough progress while at the Women in Need house that moving back to Hilo hasn’t put her stability or her sobriety at risk. But she misses the camaraderie of the house and worries about her former housemates.
Heather Hofferbert grew sunflowers in the backyard of a domestic violence shelter where she lived with four other women before it closed in July. (Courtesy: Heather Hofferbert)
“I know one of them kind of struggled for a while,” she said. “She was feeling traumatized and scared because it was new and she was still doing the work on herself to build boundaries, set and maintain healthy boundaries.”
Thousands of people are impacted by domestic violence every year in Hawaiʻi. In fiscal year 2023, nearly 5,000 domestic abuse protective orders were filed in circuit courts across the state. A survey released by the Hawaiʻi State Coalition Against Domestic Violence in May 2024 found 18% of respondents reported having experienced domestic violence in their lifetime.
The survey also found that survivors need services like medical care, legal assistance, victim advocacy and housing help and that a lack of financial security was one of the biggest barriers they faced when thinking about leaving an abusive relationship. Nonprofits in the state have been working to meet those needs by providing free or low-cost shelter space, rental assistance, legal help on a sliding scale, counseling and other types of services to assist victims.
Child and Family Service, a nonprofit offering a variety of community programs including domestic violence services, lost $3 million in operating revenue, including from federal grants, this year, forcing it to reduce its workforce and cut back on services, a representative of the organization told legislators during a hearing last week where applicants for funding the state has made available for nonprofits testified. The organization is requesting $700,000 to restore lost federal funding that will help pay for safety net services for 3,500 families and an additional $500,000 to pay for mental health counseling for people without insurance.
Tiffany Foyle, spokeswoman with the organization, declined an interview with Civil Beat but said Child and Family Service is currently not pausing any of its programs, although the representative told legislators that services had been cut back.
The Domestic Violence Action Center, the state’s largest domestic violence organization that operates a hotline that received more than 4,500 calls last year, lost just over $1 million in federal grant funding this year, according to Laurie Tochiki, interim CEO. That includes $428,000 from the Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services for outreach to Filipino survivors.
The center was also expecting to receive an additional $600,000 over the next three years through an Office on Violence Against Women grant that was not renewed, Tochiki wrote in an email.
Tochiki did not respond to questions about what exactly the money was used for, though she said support groups run with the funding have been transitioned into other programs.
The organization applied for $450,000 from the Legislature to support its hotline, Tochiki said during testimony at the hearing last week.
“Without lasting solutions,” she said, “survivors lose their safety net.”
Programs Serving Native Hawaiians Hit Hard
Other programs specifically serving Native Hawaiian and Filipino survivors of domestic violence have also lost funding.
According to the Hawaiʻi State Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s survey, Native Hawaiians and Filipinos report intimate partner violence at higher rates than the population of Hawaiʻi overall. Thirty percent of Native Hawaiian respondents and 24% of Filipino respondents said they had experienced domestic violence compared to 18% of respondents overall.
A program on Kauaʻi that provided cultural programming, prevention education and crisis intervention to Native Hawaiian victims of domestic violence also lost its funding and had to stop operations in September.
Ho‘omana I Ka Lāhui, run through the YWCA of Kauaʻi, was supposed to receive $214,000 a year for three years through a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, said Cheryl Lum, executive director of the YWCA.
Community members attend a Niʻihau shell jewelry-making workshop hosted by the Ho‘omana I Ka Lāhui program. The program had to stop operations in September after losing federal funding. (Courtesy: Kawena Bagano)
Lum received notice in July that the grant would be terminated at the end of September, exactly one year after the program launched.
The organization closed the two satellite offices it had been leasing — one in the West Kaua`i Technology & Visitor Center in Waimea and the other in the Anahola Marketplace. It also had to eliminate two positions created to help operate the program. Those staffers are still working with YWCA but in a different capacity.
Kawena Bagano, who lost her job as program director, said she was raising awareness and building relationships in the community before the program was cut.
She hosted cultural events like ʻukulele lessons, Niʻihau shell jewelry-making workshops and local speakers to draw out members of the community and educate them about the resources available if they or someone they know was experiencing domestic violence.
One event with a local motivational speaker Kyle Quilausing drew 80 attendees, she said. She also provided various types of support to about a dozen people experiencing domestic violence or relationship issues, including one young person who said he was experiencing suicidal ideations because of relationship difficulties. She made a safety plan with him, referred him to other services in the community and continued to follow up with him regularly to check on his well-being.
Bagano also taught classes on domestic violence and sexual assault prevention at two Hawaiian-focused charter schools.
“I was really hoping that we would be able to increase the number of survivors to come in and reach out for services,” she said. “I was hoping that us being in their neighborhood would allow them that convenience and flexibility of stopping by.”
Bagano is now working for another nonprofit, Alu Like, that serves the Native Hawaiian community and teaches part time at Kawaikini Public Charter School.
She still tries to serve survivors when she can, but she fears that without a dedicated program, fewer Native Hawaiians experiencing domestic violence will feel comfortable coming forward for help.
“I think what will be lost is just a safe place for the community to come to and feel connected and have a place of healing,” she said. “We tried to provide that in a way that is more culturally resonant and so that is no longer available for these survivors.”
Civil Beat’s reporting on women’s and girls’ issues is funded in part by the Frost Family Foundation. Kauaʻi coverage is supported in part by a grant from the G. N. Wilcox Trust.
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