Located in Downtown Los Angeles near Skid Row, the Downtown Women’s Cetner (DWC) is the only organization in L.A. focused exclusively on serving and empowering women experiencing homelessness and formerly homeless women.
DWC envisions a Los Angeles where every woman is housed and on a path to personal stability. Its mission is to end homelessness for women in greater Los Angeles through housing, wellness, and advocacy. Founded in 1978, it was the first permanent supportive housing provider for women in the United States. DWC also offers the only health clinic for women on Skid Row.
The DWC ethos is that homelessness is not inevitable, but a societal problem that bears especially hard on women. We recently spoke with Ana Velouise, Director of Communications and Policy at DWC, about L.A.’s current surge in homelessness and how Angelenos can help both DWC and others throughout L.A. who are experiencing homelessness.
Q: What are the primary driving factors to homelessness for women?Are there particular issues that women experiencing homelessness face?
DWC:The staggeringly high prevalence of gender-based violence is the most distinguishing difference between women and men experiencing homelessness.
For many women, this violence is not just one instance, but rather an ongoing reality. Of the women surveyed for the 2016 Downtown Women’s Needs Assessment, nearly 50% experienced violence at some point during the last 12 months and 25% had experienced violence at least four times within the last year. So, a history of trauma is a particular issue that women experiencing homelessness face.
In addition to violence against women, high housing costs, job loss, and systemic racism and agism are all drivers of homelessness for women. Many of the women we serve became homeless as a result of increased rent and/or job loss.
Q: Managing donated goods and clothing seems like it could be challenging. What are the items the DWC needs the most? What are the things people donate that aren’t helpful? What would you like to tell the public about your donated goods program?
DWC:We keep an updated wish list of items we currently need on our website. It includes an Amazon list and a variety of other items! We’re always in need of gift cards, new socks, and new bras. In terms of items that aren’t helpful to us, we don’t need women’s sanitary products (because the majority of women we serve are older) or children’s items.
Q: Many Angelenos are very concerned about the steep rise in homelessnessin the last few years. What is the number one thing that you want L.A.constituents to know about homelessness? (To allow them better understandit).
DWC:The number one thing we would want Angelenos to know is that people experiencing homelessness are our neighbors and human beings. Particularly for women, they are experiencing homelessness for reasons that are not personal failings, but failures on the part of safety nets which are supposed to help in times of need. Also, it costs less to house people than to have them living on the streets of our city, so solving the homelessness crisis is both the right thing to do from a moral and from a fiscal standpoint.
Q: How can the average Angeleno help DWC? How can local government help now?
DWC:There is a proven solution to ending homelessness, and that is permanent supportive housing. In order to build more affordable housing and permanent supportive housing, we need Angelenos to attend their neighborhood councils and contact their City Councilmembers to voice support for these projects in their neighborhoods.
You can also help the homelessness crisis by having conversations about it with your friends, family, and neighbors. There are many myths about people experiencing homelessness that are helpful to debunk and discuss, and the more we gather and discuss solutions as a community, the greater the likelihood that we house all our homeless neighbors.
Learn more at www.DowntownWomensCenter.org.