Domestic Violence Shelters in the United States

Below are two maps that show the number of domestic violence shelters in the United States. The first one is an isochrone map colored by drive times - the fastest times corresponding to the darkest purple color and the longest drive times colored in yellow.

The second map shows how many services exist in any given city. In general, most cities offer at least one service, but in larger metro areas like Los Angeles and New York that number goes up. The circles correspond to the number of services in a given city. When clicked, each location on the map lists the total number of programs, including hotlines and emergency shelters.

On both maps users can search for any city in the country using the box in the upper left hand corner and zoom in for a more detailed look at access to services.

To get the data for these maps we scraped the website domesticshelters.org, which lists every domestic violence service program in the country. The data is updated twice per year, and each organization can edit their information freely via a login provided to them by the site.

Because the location of domestic violence shelters is sensitive (even domesticshelters.org does not list exact addresses), the location of each shelter is positioned at the center of the city it’s in.

Some thoughts

It might seem like these two maps match the layout of the U.S. population quite well, but in the context of domestic violence they tell an important story. Take Nevada, for instance, which has the largest hole in domestic violence services than any other state. While it ranks as one of the least populated states in the U.S., it ranks quite high for domestic violence against women, according to data from the Violence Policy Center. Over roughly the last 20 years, Nevada has consistently been in the top 5 of states for domestic violence homicides against women. In 2021, law makers in Nevada allocated funds to increase DV services in rural areas.

The chart below uses data from the Violence Policy Center to show how states rank when it comes to domestic violence homicide against women. I used VPC's data on the rate of femicide per 100,000 females.