No One Should Have to Choose Between Safety and the Ones They Love
By Nathaniel Fields
This National Pet Month, I keep coming back to a simple truth I’ve seen play out time and time again: safety should never require separation.
For nearly 50 years, Urban Resource Institute has supported families fleeing domestic violence and homelessness. I have met parents who delayed leaving dangerous situations because they could not bring their pet. I have met children who, even in crisis, worried more about their dog or cat than themselves.
And I have seen what happens when they finally arrive somewhere safe, together.
A mother holding her child while their dog curls up at their feet for the first time in weeks. A young person finally able to sleep, their cat tucked beside them. A family walking through our doors with nothing but a bag and a guinea pig, and finding not just shelter, but relief.
This is not emotional. It is survival.
Research shows that 50% of survivors will not leave an abusive home if it means leaving their pet behind. Yet fewer than 20% of shelters in the United States allow pets. That gap is not just unfortunate. It is dangerous.
When we ask someone to choose between their safety and the life they love, we are not offering a real path out. We are reinforcing the barriers that keep people trapped.
More than a decade ago, we decided to challenge that. In 2013, URI launched the People and Animals Living Safely program, the first in the country to allow survivors of domestic violence to enter shelter with their pets. It was a simple idea, but a radical shift in practice.
Today, PALS is integrated across our shelters in New York City and has supported more than 2,000 survivors and over 1,000 pets. What we have learned is clear. Healing looks different when families are not forced to fracture in order to survive.
But emergency shelter is only one part of the solution. In 2024, we became the first provider in the country to pilot pet-inclusive shelter within a transitional housing facility for families facing housing insecurity. And just this year, we opened Magnolia Gardens in Queens, a new residential facility that will soon stand as the first official transitional housing model in the country designed for families with pets.
This is what a real continuum of care looks like. Not a series of disconnected interventions, but a pathway. From crisis to stability to permanent housing. And at every step, families remain whole.
We are now working to scale that model. Through PALS for All, URI is leading an effort to make New York City’s entire human services system pet-inclusive by 2030. That means equipping providers with the tools, training, and standards to safely welcome pets. It means rethinking policies that were never designed with real families in mind. And it means acknowledging that the bond between people and their animals is not a luxury. It is often a lifeline.
But systems change requires policy change. On Animal Advocacy Day in Albany, we called on lawmakers to pass S673/A1693 and S7612/A8375, and to include $5 million in the state budget to expand pet-inclusive shelter statewide. We are grateful for the leadership of Assemblymembers Linda B. Rosenthal and Donna Lupardo, who understand that this is not a fringe issue. It is a public safety issue.
If we are serious about helping survivors leave abusive situations and helping families exit homelessness, we have to remove the barriers that stand in their way. This is one of them.
We know what works. We have built it. We have proven it. Now we need to make it the standard. Because no one should have to choose between safety and the ones they love.
