Regarding the story in the paper this week about a safe home for women. I live on the very small residential no outlet street where this is being built. There are many housewives, families that home school, elderly people, and kids that live here. We are NOT in support of this and have voiced this to the organization in numerous in-person meetings. They are putting our whole neighborhood in danger. They are changing our quality of life in many ways, taking our feeling of safety away, and our property values are going to decline. While we all support the idea, the location is the issue. They have ignored our legitimate concerns and the safety of our children. So, when they say they want to thank the community for the love and support, they are NOT talking about the community they are negatively impacting.
Since Yancey County has no zoning laws, there is nothing we can do. The county commissioners can’t/ will do nothing… but I wonder if it were being built on their street… how would they stop it? I would wager, they’d find a way to stop it. But like most other things, it’s not affecting them so they don’t care.
https://www.ncadv.org/
A study of contacts to the National Domestic Violence Hotline found that: • 2/3 of respondents experienced intimate partner stalking. • 28% experienced both stalking and gun threats. • 76% of women threatened by an intimate partner with a gun also experienced stalking. • 1/3 of women who were stalked by an intimate partner but were not threatened with a gun worried their abusers would get a gun to harm them.
• Women in rural areas were more likely to experience intimate partner stalking and also gun threats than women in urban and suburban areas.10
STALKING AND FEMICIDE
• 76% of women murdered by an intimate partner were stalked first; 85% of women who survived murder attempts were stalked.11
• 89% of femicide victims who had been physically assaulted before their murder were also stalked in the last year prior to their murder.12
• 54% of femicide victims reported stalking to the police before they were killed by their stalkers.13
The statistics show us and our neighbors, it’s not if a crazy maniac will come looking for their wife/ girlfriend, to commit violence, but WHEN. Our kids will no longer be able to play in the woods or ride their bikes again. A person could live in the woods behind any of our houses and stalk these women, our kids, etc and no one would ever know they are there. I will not be able to go get my chickens or work in my garden without protection. These are just a couple of ways this facility is impacting our daily life.
By trying to help a handful of women, they are changing the lives of many more people.
