‘Real lives at risk': Trump grant freeze threatens groups fighting violence and helping victims in Boston

Boston Globe

15-03-2025

That uncertainty threatens to undercut Roca's work and that of other social-service organizations across Boston that officials describe as key to the city's anti-violence efforts — helping Boston reach
'Boston is the safest major city in the country due to the strong partnerships between our Boston Police Department, community organizations and residents across neighborhoods,' Emma Pettit, a spokesperson for Mayor Michelle Wu, said in a statement. 'Our non-profit partners are critical in our year-round work to keep our communities safe.'
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The federal government awarded the Chelsea-based Roca $8.4 million this fiscal year, $6.4 million of which went to programs in Massachusetts, said Dwight Robson, Roca's executive vice president of operations. The Department of Justice also administered more than $7.5 million last year in direct grants to other nonprofits helping victims of domestic violence and human trafficking in Boston, according to a Globe analysis of federal spending data.
Potential cuts are already affecting operations at Roca, which recently laid off six employees — including two program workers and one administrative staffer from its Chelsea office, Robson said.
'We're feeling a great deal of uncertainty about the status of federal funding,' Robson said. 'That remains very much up in the air, and if we wait for clarity before we act, any potential hole will only grow.'
Josiah Ancrum, left, meets with violence prevention/outreach worker Mischael Morency.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
With their youth outreach efforts, Roca workers aim over weeks and months to build rapport with young adults with criminal or juvenile records, and try to help them leave that world behind.
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Sometimes those interventions are acutely urgent, said Roca Boston Assistant Director Tha Thai — like when outreach workers talk to recent victims of violence and try to prevent retaliatory attacks.
'In those moments of when a young person's been stabbed or shot, it's really critical that the first person they see is a caring, positive adult, because then you help shift the mindset,' Thai said.
On a recent day, a Globe reporter accompanied Morency on the outreach effort. Ancrum — lanky, tired, wearing a puffer jacket, patterned durag and sky-blue sweatpants — eventually emerged from the duplex. He and Morency bundled into the front seats of a car and started chatting as Morency drove around Dorchester.
Ancrum explained that he was dealing with some relationship troubles, and was working to cope in a healthy way. After a previous argument, Ancrum had punched a wall and scraped his knuckles, according to Morency, who asked him gently probing questions about how he communicates with others.
'What is the goal?' Morency asked.
'To get an understanding,' Ancrum said.
It was a simple back and forth, but Roca and city officials say that violence prevention is built on that kind of person-to-person outreach — accumulations of small, intimate moments that can help young adults with troubled pasts, like Ancrum, learn to cope with their emotions.
'Providing that safe space for him is ideal, and we're trying to get him to a point where when he's having those emotions, to know how to disrupt them,' Morency said.
Other organizations working in Boston to end violence and help victims of crime also rely on federal funding.
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At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham Health, the Justice Department is spending $848,000 to support social workers and resources for trafficking survivors. Fenway Health was granted $450,000 to provide services to LGBTQ victims of domestic violence. The Justice Department awarded $1.2 million to the Boston-based Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence, which shelters and assists abuse survivors in more than 20 languages. And $4.8 million went to the Victim Rights Law Center, which provides free legal services to abuse survivors and handles up to 1,400 legal matters per year.
The DOJ did not return a request for comment.
Amanda Walsh, deputy director for external affairs for the Victim Rights Law Center, said grants usually posted by the DOJ's Office on Violence Against Women have disappeared from the agency's website. If that funding vanishes, the center will likely have to cut around half its staff, Walsh said.
'If federal funding is to be terminated in any way, an organization like ours would be devastated,' Walsh said.
The DOJ has offered little communication about the future of its funding, Walsh said.
'It's not clear to us that even they know what to expect,' Walsh said. 'There's a lot of uncertainty within the field, within our organization, within the organizations we work with.'
The Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence receives around 30 percent of its funding from the federal government, said co-Executive Director Cristina Ayala. That money pays for the salaries of about 12 lawyers, counselors and case managers.
The organization's grants do not expire this year, so immediate funding will likely continue — as long as the federal government fulfills its obligations, Ayala said. The White House Office of Management and Budget ordered a pause on all federal assistance in January, though that directive is currently
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'They are putting real lives at risk,' Ayala said. 'A lot of the most vulnerable members of our community will be without a lifeline.'
Roca violence prevention/outreach worker Mischael Morency waited in the cold for one of his clients to come to meet him.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
For Morency, the Roca outreach worker, the job is personal. Six years ago, Morency was facing a gun charge when the judge offered him a choice: participate in Roca, or face criminal prosecution. Roca had reached out before, but Morency didn't think he needed help. All of it, he said, seemed normal — the local rivalries, carrying a gun, friends getting shot at, friends shooting back, neighborhood kids ending up in jail or dead.
'It was like tunnel vision,' Morency said. 'I just needed to just hang out with my friends, do what I do. I didn't think there was anything wrong at the time.'
But when the judge offered Roca as
a
lifeline, he took it. It was the first time he'd really interrogated his emotions, he said. And gradually, he bought in. He broke reckless habits and built new ones, he said. He graduated from the program. And in 2023, when Thai offered him a job as an outreach worker, he accepted.
It's that kind of shift that Roca exists to create, Thai said. Gradual, often fragile change, which could evaporate if funding disappears.
'It's important to keep showing up,' Thai said.
Dan Glaun can be reached at