Anna Melbin

Transitional Housing & Technical Assistance Specialist

Anna is the Transitional Housing & Technical Assistance Specialist at NNEDV. She provides comprehensive technical assistance to over 200 transitional housing programs across the country, focusing on services for survivors of domestic, sexual and dating violence, and stalking. Anna has worked with and on behalf of homeless families and domestic violence survivors for 15 years. She began this work by providing direct services in homeless shelters, as an advocate in a battered women’s shelter, and as a case manager in transitional housing programs for families. She then broadened her experience to state-level work. Before coming to NNEDV, Anna was Special Projects Manager at the Michigan Domestic Violence Prevention and Treatment Board (MDVTPB). In this role she focused on state-level policy work around domestic violence, housing and homelessness, and welfare reform and implementation. She also provided training and technical assistance to MDVPTB’s funded transitional housing programs, and was instrumental in implementing MDVPTB’s pilot SafeHavens (visitation and safe exchange) grant. Anna has conducted comparative national and state-wide research on transitional housing programs for battered women, and is first author of Transitional Supportive Housing Programs: Battered Women’s Perspectives and Recommendations, published in Affilia, 2003. She is Vice-chair of the Board of the Maine Women’s Lobby, was an active member of Maine’s Workplace Violence Taskforce, and has been a member of the Housing Committee of the National Taskforce to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women since 2002. Anna holds a Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Policy, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.