Louisiana domestic violence center will soon allow victims to bring pets after additions, renovations

BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — For the past week, nonprofits and local volunteers in the area have been renovating and bringing in additions to make the Iris Domestic Violence Center a pet-friendly shelter for survivors.

Additions are being made through labor and funding from the following nonprofits, including Greater Good Charities and RedRover.

"We provided them with a $60,000 safe housing grant. We're very proud to do that," said Ketia Johnson, community outreach coordinator of RedRover. "We're working to have 25% of domestic violence shelters pet friendly by the end of 2025."

"Inside, we have added some cat enrichment, added some functional pet furniture, and then outside we added two play yards, and we created some chain or chain link kennels so that dogs can be kept outside temporarily if survivors need to go to work or if they need to run errands," said Gabbie Vilanova, senior manager of rescue rebuild at Greater Good Charities.

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Anne Richey, chief financial officer for Iris Domestic Violence Center, is excited for all the additions. She said the shelter has been wanting to become pet friendly for more than two years.

"We do have to currently turn people away and the statistics are about 47% of victims of domestic violence do not leave their abuser because of their pets," Richey said.

The center serves Baton Rouge and seven surrounding parishes. Richey is thankful for all nonprofits that have helped with labor and funding. She said survivors will be able to use the 10 designated rooms with pet accommodations in January 2025.

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