On domestic violence calls, Inspector Tony Flores, a 43-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, hands victims a referral card (opens in new tab) with names and numbers for shelters, hotlines, and counselors.

Then he pulls out a pen and circles just one: the Cooperative Restraining Order Clinic. “CROC,” he says, “is the Nordstrom of restraining orders.”

In San Francisco, CROC is often the first door survivors knock on. The nonprofit’s team of five attorneys guide roughly 700 survivors a year, mostly women, through the grueling process of obtaining domestic violence restraining orders in family court. About a third of CROC’s budget comes from the city.

Emberly Cross, CROC’s coordinating attorney, and Tara Berta, CROC’s supervising attorney, are permanent fixtures in court. They work nights and weekends and plan vacations like ER doctors — one of them must always be in town. They’ve never turned anyone away. More clients just means less sleep.

If CROC had more lawyers, they’d still be underwater — domestic violence is that pervasive.

“Anybody who works with humans is working with people who are survivors of domestic violence,” said Cross.

A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found (opens in new tab) that 48% of California women have experienced intimate partner violence. In San Francisco, that would be roughly 200,000 women.

Legal services are essential for survivors to escape abuse. There is a stark power imbalance in civil court between abusers and their victims, even when both are representing themselves. A seminal study (opens in new tab) in the early 2000s found that access to civil attorneys — not more shelters or policing — was the single biggest factor in the sharp decline in domestic abuse during the 1990s.

But most of those navigating the legal system go it alone, unable to afford legal help. San Francisco spends around $1 million each year on legal services for survivors. But it’s never enough. There are fewer than a dozen attorneys in San Francisco — including the five at CROC — who specialize in offering free representation to domestic violence survivors.

In 2022, San Francisco voters thought they had a solution. Proposition D would create a city office for victims and offer free civil representation for survivors, above and beyond what the city was already spending. The ballot measure passed with 60% of the vote.

But three years later, not one full-time attorney has been hired under Prop. D.

Instead of expanding civil legal services to match voters’ wishes, this spring Mayor Daniel Lurie proposed deep cuts to existing legal aid — including eliminating CROC’s funding entirely. Today, the rights enshrined under Prop D. exist on paper only.

“It is something the people said that they wanted,” said Assemblywoman Catherine Stefani, who authored the proposition when she was a city supervisor.

“The fact that it’s left unfunded, to me, is just an absolute disgrace.”

Criminal defendants in the U.S. have had a constitutional right to an attorney since the Supreme Court passed Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963. But there’s no such guarantee in civil court, even when the stakes can include deportation, loss of child custody, eviction, or domestic violence. Legal advocates have called this gap “Civil Gideon,” and San Francisco once promised to close it.

The Board of Supervisors in 2012 passed an ordinance declaring San Francisco to be the nation’s first “right to civil counsel” city. In practice, the ordinance authorized a one-year pilot of around $1.7 million in civil legal services.

A report two years later showed what legal advocates had expected: Investment in civil counsel dramatically improved outcomes for poor families and could save the city future costs. In 2018, San Francisco voters established a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction, where there was a clear power imbalance between renters and lawyered-up landlords.

The U.S. has more lawyers than any other country but ranks (opens in new tab) in the bottom 25% for access to civil legal aid. And California lags behind much of the country, ranking 35th out of 52 jurisdictions. In 2021, the National Center for Access to Justice found (opens in new tab) that California had 0.72 legal aid attorneys for every 10,000 people living below 200% of the federal poverty line — far short of the recommended 10 attorneys.

San Francisco's investment reflects this shortfall. Last year, the city spent $4.2 million on general civil legal services plus a little more than $1 million earmarked specifically for survivors of domestic violence and distributed to nonprofit legal services groups such as CROC.

Escaping domestic abuse often triggers custody battles, housing disputes, employment issues, and immigration problems. A 2022 study by the Legal Services Corporation found (opens in new tab) that 98% of domestic violence survivors face at least one civil legal issue, and 87% face more than five — far more than the average American.

In San Francisco, supply doesn’t meet demand: More than 13,000 survivors sought help from the city’s nonprofits in 2023. There are more victims stuck in abusive relationships trying to leave than there are lawyers available to help them.

Without access to legal help, many survivors choose to stay with their abusers. Those who leave often end up homeless. More than half of San Francisco’s homeless population are survivors of domestic violence, according to a city survey (opens in new tab) last year.

For Stefani, access to attorneys for survivors isn’t just policy — it’s personal. She alleges her stepfather abused her mother for 41 years.

“He kept a gun in the glove compartment and a gun in the nightstand,” she said. “I was terrified of him.”

When Stefani was in high school in the ‘80s, she moved in with her father. Her mother stayed behind. “She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to survive on her own,” Stefani said.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that Stefani and her siblings were able to help their mother — now in her 70s — escape. They gave her a place to live and helped her hire an attorney for her divorce. That experience emboldened Stefani to push for policies to help other survivors and families with fewer resources.

“I just feel like it’s so incumbent on us to do everything we can to create spaces for people that allow them that freedom from the violence and the abuse,” Stefani said.

As a former prosecutor, Stefani understood the limits of the criminal justice system in stopping domestic violence. Over the last three fiscal years, just 1.7% of calls to 911 about domestic violence in San Francisco ended in a criminal conviction.

“It’s not just about prosecuting the person who continues to abuse their victim, but it’s about providing all the means to take care of the individual,” Stefani said.

Prop. D, she thought, could fill that gap for survivors who are forced to pick up the pieces of their lives alone in civil court.

The measure created a “one-stop shop” office for all victims, even those reluctant to contact police or the district attorney's office, which has its own Victim Services division. The mayor would appoint a director who would put out a request for proposals to contract with a civil legal service provider to provide free legal representation for victims.

Stefani’s staff estimated the office would serve between 500 and 800 clients in its first years, costing the city $1 million to $3 million. But they promised it would pay for itself.

Research backs that up. The State Bar of California found (opens in new tab) that helping 231 survivors obtain domestic violence restraining orders in 2017 saved the state $3 million to $4 million in medical costs alone. This year, the Legal Services Corporation reviewed (opens in new tab) two decades of economic research on civil legal services. On average, for every $1 invested, civil legal aid returned $7. In New York state, the return (opens in new tab) was $10.

Prop. D didn’t have an attached source of revenue, which is not uncommon for propositions, as it makes it easier for voters to say yes. But once such propositions are passed, it’s assumed the government should find funds to pay for them.

The measure passed in June 2022, around the time the Board of Supervisors was working on the following year’s budget. Stefani asked for two full-time budget positions to get the office off the ground, a total of less than $500,000. But the funding was removed late in negotiations. 

“Those who were in power at the time, in terms of overseeing the budget, didn't see things the way that I did,” Stefani said. 

She didn’t speak publicly about her own family’s experience with abuse until after the measure was passed. That fall, she was elected to the state Assembly. Prop. D was left behind, unfunded.

In May 2024, months before she was up for reelection, Mayor London Breed did follow through on one element of the measure: creating the Mayor’s Office for Victims’ Rights. To lead it, she tapped her former adviser Ivy Lee, who’d spent nearly a decade providing free legal representation to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking.

But in her new role, Lee wouldn’t be acting as an attorney for any victims. The office was created in name, but the legal services included in Prop. D, which Lee and other advocates say they desperately need, are nowhere to be found.

“The biggest missing piece for Prop. D is that there’s no independent revenue source that’s attached to it,” said Lee. “It’s like building a car but you don’t include an engine or a battery.”

Lee’s team of five work out of a shared floor at 49 South Van Ness, away from police precincts and the DA’s office, so survivors can walk in without fear. The team members speak English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Taiwanese. They’ve served about 160 people, connecting victims with resources and advocating on their behalf.

But the office, like many others that help survivors of abuse, is underfunded; besides staff salaries, there is no budget. The office didn’t get phones, emails, or a website until this spring. And it can’t buy a confidential database system to keep track of clients.

While the legal services portion of Prop. D was intended for survivors of domestic violence, the office serves victims of any crime. Some clients are sexual assault survivors seeking help without involving law enforcement; others arrive after finding the DA’s Victim Services division a poor fit. Most are women of color. Many are undocumented.

“We’re getting a higher and higher volume every week from immigrants, mostly Spanish-speaking,” she said. “They’re afraid now to contact the police.”

Recently, a domestic violence survivor came to the office; she needed to get her passport and birth certificate from her apartment, but the property manager illegally refused to let her enter. “If we weren’t there, she wouldn’t have them,” Lee said. But there’s much more to do.

“You need a lawyer. The idea you can just ‘empower’ someone to assert their own rights — that’s not how the world works.”

For many San Franciscans, Lurie’s election marked a new era of hope. But for advocates of domestic violence, history has taught them to temper their expectations.

“We have had to fight for every nickel, always,” said Beverly Upton, executive director of San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium. “Nothing has ever come easy to the gender-based violence services, ever.”

Advocates of Prop. D have little hope. If anything, the movement appears to be regressing.

Under Lurie, grants for gender-based violence nonprofits moved to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

To balance an ailing budget, MOHCD this spring proposed nearly $5 million in cuts to existing civil legal aid: $4.2 million in general civil legal services and around $700,000 earmarked solely for domestic violence survivors. Under this proposal, CROC’s entire $362,187 annual grant from the city would have been eliminated — around a third of the nonprofit’s $1.1 million budget.

Advocates mobilized, sending hundreds of letters to City Hall and commenting at Board of Supervisors budget meetings.

Flores held up his SVU referral card during public comment. “How am I supposed to have my officers help these individuals?” the inspector asked. “I need CROC.”

The board added back some of the funding for general legal services, but $1.2 million was cut.

MOHCD declined to disclose exact grant amounts for domestic violence legal providers, citing ongoing contract negotiations. CROC's grant is being reduced by $8,800.

Lurie’s office defended the decisions. “Even in a tough budget cycle, Mayor Lurie preserved funding for gender-based violence programs,” said spokesperson Kate Poltrack, emphasizing that “public safety is Mayor Lurie’s top priority.”

MOHCD declined to comment on whether grants for domestic violence nonprofits or general legal services will be up for cuts in coming years.

To providers, the message is clear: The city’s budget represents its values.

“It is literally budget crumbs that we throw at this. It's like chump change,” said Lee.

“I can never take for granted that the city of San Francisco is committed to making sure domestic violence survivors have safety,” said Cross. “I feel like a lizard sleeping with one eye open.”

In May, Stefani wrote a letter to Lurie, urging him to fund legal aid and reminding him of the broken promise of Prop. D. “These services are not optional; they are a core part of what allows survivors to rebuild their lives and stay safe,” she wrote. “Despite this clear mandate, funding for this right has still never been included in a city budget.”

Lee said securing more funding is a long shot. “How do you justify creating something new when you’re cutting things that already exist?”

Correction 9/9/25: An earlier version of this story erroneously described who can access the SFDA’s Victim Services division. The division is open to victims referred by police as well as self-referrals from crime victims whose criminal incidents were not reported by law enforcement and are not being pursued for prosecution by the SFDA.