by Jacquelyn Jimenez Romero, Washington State Standard
July 17, 2025
Groups that assist crime victims in Washington will look at reducing services as federal dollars remain down and funding in the state budget falls short filling the gap.
Since 2018, funding for crime victims has declined by more than 50%. The main funding source for victim services in Washington, the Victims of Crime Act State Plan, or VOCA, comes from fines, forfeited bonds and other financial penalties in certain federal cases.
Earlier this year, the funding was projected to be cut in half due to the state’s multibillion-dollar deficit, but the current budget maintains the funding at around $20 million per year.
“Unfortunately, it’s not enough, so we’re going to continue our fight,” said Kate Krug, CEO of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center. “I think our network is the weakest that it’s ever been… because of the lack of resources that we now have available to us.”
Earlier this year, Hope Alliance, the only organization supporting sexual assault and domestic violence survivors in Lewis County, almost closed down, according to Kris Camenzind, the group’s executive director.
The group operates a 24-hour hotline, domestic violence shelter, and other legal and medical advocacy services for survivors. They not only respond to situations of domestic abuse and sexual assault, but also help survivors by providing shelter, food, and assistance finding jobs.
Their funding decreased by more than $150,000 this year, Camenzind said. To remain afloat, the group will reduce hotline hours from 24 hours a day to weekday business hours and cut back legal services for survivors.
With these adjustments, Camenzind expects their organization to continue offering services through January 2026. From there, the organization is hoping to receive private donations and grants to help them get through the end of next June, when the next state fiscal year ends.
The biggest struggle “is paying a livable wage, doing a stressful job, maintaining the 24/7 hour coverage in a large area with little staff,” Camenzind said.
This year, from January to May, Hope Alliance assisted 628 individuals and this number has increased in each of the past five years.
Camenzind has been doing this work for more than 25 years. She said lately the situations she’s seeing with crime victims are increasingly violent, with more weapons involved and people being held against their will.
“I am startled at the high risk lethality that we’ve seen over the last five years, in comparison to what I saw in the early 2000s,” Camenzind said. “The lethality risk that women are under is way greater than I would have ever imagined.”
The current funding model raises uncertainty for advocates, with every year bringing potential for closures, layoffs, or service reductions, if enough state dollars don’t come in.
“We wanted to get stable, consistent funding that brought up victim services, and that was a $50 million request for a biennium budget,” Krug said. “We wanted to make sure that there wouldn’t be any wait times for folks… that you know, we’d be able to help them in the same timely fashion that we’re able to help them now.”
In the Legislature this year, Senate Bill 5362 proposed that Washington’s crime victims fund have $50 million annually through 2029, $60 million every year through 2033, and $70 million every year starting in 2033. The total would include both state and federal funding. For example, if the federal government provided $40 million in 2026, the state would add $10 million.
But that bill failed as legislators scrambled to close a budget gap. “Financially, we’re not in a good position as a state to codify it,” said Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, the bill’s sponsor.
Dhingra said she plans to continue exploring options to provide consistent crime victims funding in the next session. Last year, she established a work group to study funding mechanisms for victim services. A report on the findings is set to be released this year.
An added source of funding to assist domestic violence survivors was approved this year under House Bill 1498, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Davis, D-Shoreline. This bill would increase marriage licenses in Washington by $100.
The money collected would go toward a domestic violence co-responder grant program. The fee increase is expected to bring in about $4.1 million in additional revenue a year.
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