Well, good morning. I'm Congressman Greg Cassar. I'm proud to represent Austin and Travis County
in the United States Congress. And today, I would like to deeply thank our friends at
SAFE alongside Travis County leaders for bringing this vision to life. We were just talking
about how back when I was on the city council, we were talking about how we could keep
survivors safe on this piece of property and add housing onto this property, we've been
talking about that for seven or eight years.
And today my office is proud to deliver a million dollars in federal funding to make
sure that families in Austin are safe from domestic violence, sexual assault, and homelessness.
The Sasha, which this million dollars will help complete, is 60 new homes on
safe campus serving nearly 250 survivors at a time. For those families, these
homes are not a statistic. They're a safe place for an Austin kid to do their
homework and just be a normal child. A safe place for survivors to heal and
to rebuild, a safe place for families to be together, sometimes three generations under
one roof.
The Sasha comes with counseling and legal help and support services for our kids.
Too many women and children in America feel like they have to choose between being safe
at home or having a roof over their head.
And here in Travis County, we're helping make sure that women and kids don't have
to make that choice.
That no one should have to choose to try to go sleep under a bridge in order to be safe
from violence and abuse back at home.
Because safety is not a luxury.
Every single family deserves it.
Housing like this ripples throughout an entire community.
It reduces homelessness.
It keeps people housed instead of having people cycle in and out of homelessness
or in and out of the emergency room.
And most importantly, it makes us all safer.
We've seen from permanent supportive housing
and supportive housing projects like this
that we have seen a rest drop in some cases more than 70%
once we make sure that people have a safe place to live,
a safe place to go.
Of course, we work constantly to improve our 911 response
in this community. But we also want to make sure that fewer people have to call
911 in the first place because they have a safe place to live and a safe place to
go. The Sasha of course is just one more piece of the incredible work that Safe
does in this community and it won't be the last thing that we invest in and it
won't be the only piece of work that we fund at the federal county city level.
We do enormous good in this community together.
Some of us were just talking about how it was just a few years ago that we worked with
SAFE to clear the scandalous rape kit backlog in this community.
Or how at the city and local level, we realized there was this huge waiting list for shelter
shelter, and we purchased an old empty hotel and made sure that we have expanded shelter
capacity in this community.
And now we know that we have a huge shortage of permanent supportive housing, including
for families and survivors of abuse and the Sasha is going to help us tackle that challenge.
So even though in Washington, D.C., there's gridlock and there are so many problems in
Washington, D.C.
I'm committed.
We're committed to making sure that when Austinites pay their federal taxes that some of that money comes home to do something good
At a time where we're spending billions of dollars on wars of choice that don't seem to make anyone safer
This is an example of how if we bring some of that money home if
Instead of spending our money on war or in bombs or tax breaks to the ultra wealthy
policy, we can actually spend our taxpayer money making our lives better, making our
community safer, reducing homelessness, reducing violence.
And that's exactly what we're doing with this million dollars.
But we don't do that alone at the federal level.
We need partners here at the local level who will make sure your dollars are spent
responsibly, who know what the highest impact projects are.
And the first person I call in all of Travis County with that question is your county judge,
our leader here in Travis County, Andy Brown, and we would not be able to have done this
without him and his leadership.
So I'm proud to call up Judge Brown.
Thank you, man.
Great to see you.
I want to say thank you to SAFE, thank you to Congressman Kassar, to our community
partners and everyone who helped make the Sasha a reality.
Today is really about celebrating what's possible when we all come together with
a shared commitment to protecting our neighbors and building a stronger community.
For so many decades, SAFE has been a lifeline for survivors of domestic violence, sexual
assault, child abuse, and human trafficking.
And Travis County is proud to help build upon this legacy with investments this year
so far of $1.5 million with federal ARPA money to help the ship investment, as well
as the ship investment of $7.2 million again, ARPA Money, dedicated towards safe Lancaster
development. The work of SAFE has transformed lives across central Texas, and today we're
building on that legacy. We know that violence and homelessness are deeply connected. For
too many survivors, leaving an abusive situation can also mean losing the safety
and stability of a home. And nobody should have to choose between escaping violence
and having a place to sleep.
That's why the Sasha is so important.
This isn't just another housing development.
It's a place where survivors can begin to heal,
rebuild, and create a brighter future for themselves and their families.
When it's fully occupied, we're going to have nearly 250 survivors,
including children, parents, and even grandparents,
who will have access to safe, stable housing
and the support they need to move forward.
Projects like this are a great investment in our community.
When we provide stable housing and wraparound services, we improve health outcomes, we reduce
the strain on emergency systems, and we reduce the strain on our county jail, which has been
going up in population since the pandemic.
And it's through supportive housing like this unit and others, that's the only way
that we're going to ever reduce that number in our jail.
So I just want to thank Congressman Greg Gissar and the federal government for
all of your help and leadership on this. And I will turn it over to our buddy,
Commissioner George Morales. Thank you, George. Thank you, Congressman.
So I want to start off by saying thank you to Congressman Cassar and our
county judge, any brown.
For your safe alliance has been a beacon of hope, providing a life
changing violence prevention services to children, family and individuals
throughout our community. Because of its unwavering commitment, countless
survivors have found a place where fear is replaced with safety, despair, with hope,
and healing. As the needs of the community continue to grow, Safe Alliance remains a
leader in both vision, compassion, continually assessing emerging needs, and boldly expanding
its programs to ensure that every person seeking assistance has the opportunity to rebuild
their life with dignity and support. My wife is an employee of SAFE. She has 16
years of service here, 14 as a parent team specialist at the old building, two
and a half years here as the basic needs coordinator in this warehouse.
SAFE Alliance holds a very special place in my heart. Throughout its
remarkable growth in Austin. I had a privilege of witnessing its impact
firsthand during my year serving as both the police officer and constable.
Time and again, I saw the extraordinary compassion of its staff,
its volunteers and the critical services it provides. I saw a lot done
in our community with safe.
You are continually a beacon of hope, especially in our precinct for
community that I wholeheartedly represent.
Congratulations to the Safe Alliance Board of Directors, dedicate staff and
incredible volunteers. Your vision, compassion and steadfast commitment
continue to meet our community's greatest needs with courage and grace.
The Sasha is more than a building. It is a symbol of hope, resilience, new
beginnings. And because of your leadership, generations to come will
have a safe place to heal, to be nurtured and to thrive.
Thank you so much.
I'd like to introduce Pierre.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm Dr. Pierre Baraste, and I'm the CEO of the Safe Alliance.
And Congressman Cassar, thank you for being here and helping us secure this one million
dollar investment in survivors of domestic and sexual violence and their children.
For more than 50 years, the Safe Alliance has walked alongside survivors of domestic sexual
violence, sex trafficking, and their children, and we've learned something quite simple
and profound.
And that is that safety requires a place to live.
We often hear survivors asked, why didn't you leave?
Why were you in the relationship for so long?
But that question assumes that there was somewhere safe for them to go.
And violence is accompanied by financial abuse, by isolation, by damaged credit, disrupted
employment, isolation from family and friends and community, and leaving an abusive relationship
It may mean abandoning everything familiar to that individual and that family.
It may mean choosing between a dangerous home or no home at all.
And domestic violence and homelessness are not separate crises.
For many survivors, in fact, they are part of the same crisis.
You see, every 20 minutes, someone in our community reaches out to our crisis line.
Every 20 minutes.
And the most common request is housing.
Over half of those waiting for emergency shelter in our waitlist are children.
Over half of those in our housing are children.
Now I am heartened to know that our nation is beginning to recognize the scale of this
housing challenge, right?
Congress came together just this July and worked together across political lines, right?
to pass the 21st century road to access to housing act and that I think is a
powerful reminder that even in a divided time as you mentioned even in gridlock
we can still choose to build something together for our communities. Housing is
where stability begins and access to housing must include safe housing for
survivors of domestic and sexual violence and their children. For someone
escaping violence, housing creates that distance from the harm they've experienced, it creates
the time to heal, the stability for their children and their lives to begin again.
The SACHA and the Safe Alliance embody that vision.
The SACHA will provide, as mentioned, permanent and transitional support of housing for survivors
and families alongside secure spaces, counseling, legal support, peer support, children services.
This $1 million investment will help strengthen those supports across safe
campus. I also want to thank the City of Austin and the Texas Department of
Housing and Community Affairs for their significant investment in this
project and of course Julia Stan and Gretchen Ellis, one of our board
members, Dr. Gretchen Ellis, whose vision has made this possible. We are
grateful as well to DMA Development, Fortcraft Architecture, Bailey Elliott
construction and most importantly to the survivors whose wisdom helped shaped what is being built here.
This is government and community working as they should. Federal leadership building upon
city and state investment, county partnership, non-profit expertise and survivor wisdom
coming together around a shared purpose. Congressman Cassar, thank you for believing
that public service can help create not only housing but freedom. I think together we are
saying that no survivor should have to choose between violence and homelessness,
that every child deserves to know a home as a place for safety, and that here in
Austin and Travis County, beginning again is possible. Thank you. Hello,
I'm Makani
Kalk and I stand here today as a survivor of domestic violence, sexual
assault, human trafficking, and homelessness. For a long time, survival meant making it through
one more night, one more threat, one more day without knowing what would happen next. It meant
carrying fear in my body while still trying to parent, find food, diapers, and a way forward.
I was fighting to survive while trying to protect my child and often felt like the world
did not see how much danger I was really in.
I didn't believe that a different life was even possible,
but when I finally got to safe, I had already been trying to escape violence for over a decade.
At the time, I was living in a tent with my two-year-old child.
We had been on the shelter waitlist for more than six months.
We depended on the kindness of strangers for diapers and food.
Recreation centers for safe daily showers.
Shelter space opened only when the threats became lethal.
Even then, shelter was only a 30-day stay.
If there was no housing on the other side of those 30 days, it meant going back to the streets.
Or, if you were lucky, moving from shelter to shelter.
For a survivor fleeing violence, 30 days disappears quickly.
Many of us leave the abuse with nothing. No income, no steady work history,
interrupted education, injuries that were never treated,
trauma that has been living in our bodies for years.
By the time survivors make it to shelter, their support systems have already been broken down.
Isolation is part of the abuse.
Friends, family, churches, and community may be separated from us, unaware, misled, or
aligned with the person who harmed us.
Survivors of domestic violence are not simply experiencing homelessness.
We are trying to escape danger while healing, parenting, looking for work, finding childcare,
fighting for custody, and cooperating with prosecution.
And all of that happens while the person who harmed us is still stalking, following, threatening, or harassing us every time we try to move forward.
I know that my first attempts at working were messy. I had long gaps in employment, unreliable childcare, and trauma responses I could not control.
I flinched from the phone ring. I jumped at loud noises. I froze when someone asked me a question. I was not lazy. I was not unwilling. I was injured.
Trauma had changed the way my brain and body responded to the world, and I needed to heal before I could fully function in the way that the world required me to.
I needed two things most of all, time and safety.
I needed time for my body and brain to understand that I was no longer in constant danger.
I needed time to learn how to breathe again, how to sleep, how to trust, how to parent without fear controlling every decision.
And I needed safety. Not just a bed for a few nights, but a stable secure place where I could begin to rebuild.
I needed people around me who also understood what I had been through.
I needed people who could see the strength it took just to keep going.
Safety gave me room to breathe, it gave me room to rest, and it gave me room to remember who I am.
I received a few years of supportive housing from SAFE and for the past five years, I have
been serving as a peer support specialist.
Now I get to sit with survivors in moments when they may feel terrified, ashamed, overwhelmed
or alone, and I get to be the living proof that healing is possible.
I get to offer the kind of presence I once needed so badly, and I also get to stand
here today and say deeply and profoundly, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank
Thank you to everyone who has invested time, money, labor, and care into the development
of the Sasha.
This work is not just a project, it is a lifeline, it is going to change lives for people like
me and the funding you have fought so hard for will create safety that survivors and
families will benefit from for generations.
Because when a survivor is given safety and time to heal, she's able to raise children
who thrive.
She's able to build stability, community, and hope.
She's able to become more than what happened to her.
And that is how we begin to break the chains of violence.
That is how we continue to stop abuse for everyone.
So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank
you for sharing your story.
And I think your story answers so many questions that folks watching at home, I think have
and ask all the time. When people ask why is it that there's 911 call after 911
call after 911 call to the same address over and over again. It's because women
and kids facing abuse in our community have way too few places to go and so
there's 911 call after 911 call for months or even years. This funding
helps us fix that. When people ask their elected officials in Austin
and all the time.
How is it that we have women and sometimes women and kids sleeping in tents?
The answer is in your story that there are way too few safe places for people to go and
that a mom is going to choose a tent to keep their kids safe if they're worried that they
could be killed back at home.
This funding helps make sure that we can get families out of tents and into safe
housing and then the chance to heal to be able to go to work because people want
to be able to work but sometimes they just need a safe place to get their life
in order so that they can build a new life. And so that's exactly what this does.
I also want to thank members of the board and our friends Janine at DMA and
our local friends at Bailey Elliott for their really important work here. This
This is something to celebrate, this is something good getting done.
As Pierre mentioned, I advocated and got this into a budget passed in a Congress with a
Republican Speaker because there were many items that I requested, and other members
of Congress requested that were questioned, but this one was not questioned.
This is something we all agree we need in Austin.
in housing that keeps people safe, gets people off the streets, and does the right thing
that I think people at home wish their federal tax dollars were going to much more often.
And so with that, I think we're going to hand you guys this big check.
I
did forget to ask y'all if we covered everything yeah you
guys should come and get in the picture
I'm proud that they have more captioning.
If you can see the camera, they can see you.
Okay, y'all, thank you guys very much.
Sorry, was there anything we didn't answer?
We cover everything.
You guys can pull us aside one on one, too, if you need.
Thank you guys so much.
Yeah man.
It's, oh, correction Alice.
Great.
We're saying, Austin Sanders.
Did you hit the meet-chain first?
Yeah, right, exactly.
I just wanted to ask a couple of follow-ups.