Los Angeles County Women’s Needs Assessment: Findings and recommendations from the 2022 Survey of Women Experiencing Homelessness.
In 2020, both the City and County of Los Angeles County identified “unaccompanied” women experiencing homelessness as a unique subpopulation among people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, and the County of Los Angeles commissioned a countywide women’s needs assessment. In fall 2022, nearly 600 women experiencing homelessness as individuals completed surveys intended to capture information about their experiences of homelessness, barriers to housing and shelter, and what they are looking for in housing and the homelessness response system. The 2022 Los Angeles County Women’s Needs Assessment follows seven additional reports supported by Downtown Women’s Center tracking the needs of women experiencing homelessness for the last twenty years.
Please join the research experts, local leaders, and advocates of women experiencing homelessness as individuals for a conversation about the Los Angeles County Women’s Needs Assessment findings and its programmatic and policy implications.
Read the report: Los Angeles County Women’s Needs Assessment: Findings from the 2022 Survey of Women Experiencing Homelessness
Speakers
Samantha Batko – Senior Fellow Urban Institute
Samantha Batko is a senior fellow and practice area lead for the Preventing and Ending Homelessness practice area in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on homelessness, housing instability, housing assistance, and supportive services. She has developed expertise on homelessness and housing over a 19-year career in the sector that has included research, federal policy, and technical assistance and training. She has expertise in several primary homelessness programs including homelessness prevention, emergency shelter, rapid re-housing, and permanent supportive housing. She is currently the principal investigator of Urban’s Housing Justice Hub, the US Department Housing and Urban Development’s Pay for Success permanent supportive housing demonstration evaluation, and the evaluation of Denver’s All in Mile High Initiative. Other current projects include the US Department of Health and Human Services Runaway and Homeless Youth Learning Agenda and case studies of Emergency Housing Voucher programs. Past projects have included the evaluation of Tipping Point Community’s Chronic Homelessness Initiative in San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Unaccompanied Women Experiencing Homelessness Needs Assessment, the development of the Emergency Rental Assistance Priority Index, and evaluation of the State of New Jersey’s Keeping Families Together supportive housing program. Batko sits on the State of California Interagency Council on Homelessness Advisory Board, the National Alliance to End Homelessness Research Council, The Homelessness Policy Research Institute based at USC Price, the Homelessness Research Advisory Council for Portland State University, and the Homelessness Research Advisory Board for All Home California. Batko has been cited in the LA Times, Route Fifty, and The Hill multiple times; has published multiple opeds, including in The Hill and in Street Sense (Washington, DC’s “street” newspaper); is frequently a guest on NPR affiliates; and has been a guest on PBS NewsHour.
Sofia Herrera – Director of Research, Planning, and Policy, Hub for Urban Initiatives
Sofia Herrera, PhD is the director of research, planning, and policy at the Hub for Urban Initiatives, a nonprofit consulting entity in Pasadena, California. She is one of the co-principal investigators leading the Los Angeles County Women’s Needs Assessment. Dr. Herrera has led and worked on many homeless counts, participatory action research projects, and strategic plans in the field of homelessness for several jurisdictions in California. Through her work, she is committed to continuously promoting trauma-informed services and gender equity in policy, programmatic approaches, and service delivery. Since 2016, Dr. Herrera has chaired the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count Advisory Board at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. She is also a past grantee and then a member of the research and steering committees at the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI) at the University of Southern California.
Trained as a clinical psychologist in the research-practitioner model, Dr. Herrera is licensed in California. She holds a faculty appointment as associate research professor at the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology in Pasadena, California. In past years, she was the research coordinator of the Fuller Youth Initiative for Violence Prevention and Positive Youth Development, an extensive research program at the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Dept. of Justice. Dr. Herrera has also researched the impact of community violence exposure and traumatic experiences on youth and school teachers domestically and in Central America. She also consults with organizations conducting program evaluations in the United States and internationally.
Myong Kim – LCSW, Chief Program Officer, Downtown Women’s Center
Myong Kim, LCSW is the Chief Program Officer at the Downtown Women’s Center and oversees DWC’s Housing, Health and Wellness, Workforce Development and Clinical programs. She has been working at the Downtown Women’s Center in various leadership roles serving unhoused women in Los Angeles for the past 9 years. She takes a strengths-based, trauma informed approach to program development, leading staff and providing services for over 5,000 women that Downtown Women’s Center serves annually. Myong has been a part of the social service field in Los Angeles serving our unhoused neighbors, survivors of trauma, children and families and transitional aged youth since 2004. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master’s Degree in Social Work from University of Southern California.
Daniella Urbina – Senior Advisor, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor Hilda L. Solis
Daniella Urbina serves Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis as her Senior Advisor. In that role, she supports the Supervisor’s work on homelessness, housing, immigration, legislative affairs and libraries. Prior to serving Supervisor Solis, Daniella was the Senior Manager for Reentry Supportive Services at the Los Angeles County Office of Diversion and Reentry. There, she managed the Reentry Intensive Case Management program which provides case management services for individuals released from incarceration or on probation. Daniella also served as a Government Innovation Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy Government Performance Lab (GPL). GPL provides pro bono technical assistance to state and local government agencies to improve the outcomes of contracted social services. She worked with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) to improve the permanent supportive housing lease-up process and enhance LAHSA’s use of data to manage and monitor its contracts.
Daniella began her career working on Senator Barbara Boxer’s reelection campaign in 2010, and served in the Senator’s Washington office after the campaign. In 2012, she returned to the campaign trail and helped reelect President Obama. Her desire to see more women in elected office drew her to EMILY’s List, where she served as the Political Opportunity Program Coordinator. In this capacity, Daniella worked to elect pro-choice Democratic women to local and state office across the US. She also managed the organization candidate training and recruitment program and served as a consultant on select campaigns. Daniella holds a B.A in Government from Harvard University and an MPA in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
Rowena Magana – Principal Analyst, Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative
Rowena has over 20 years of experience working in the homeless services and healthcare fields. She has been with the Homeless Initiative Office within the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office since 2017. Rowena focuses on homeless outreach strategies; special populations, such as women and older adults; and strengthening partnerships between County departments, homeless service providers, cities, and other stakeholders. Prior to her current role, she worked for the County Department of Health Services in government relations and homeless services.
Rowena earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Tyana “Ms. T” – Advocate
Tyana, also known as Mz T, is an award-winning social justice advocate, producer, writer, and actress. She is a third-generation domestic violence (DV) survivor who chose to break the generational belief/curse. Born in Los Angeles, California, she grew up in a household where she witnessed and experienced domestic violence at the hands of her stepfather, often taking on the role of counselor and referee at an early age. Striving for a “happy” home, her role in life from then until now has been to give a voice to the voiceless.
Currently, she co-hosts “Off the Top Thursdays” at Creating Justice in LA’s Skid Row, every Thursday, open to the public (free). Recently, from 2022 to 2023, she was both a DWC Lived Experience Board member and volunteer, and from 2023 to 2024, she serves as DWC’s Women’s Vision Committee Chairperson. Presently, she is attending Los Angeles Southwest College (LASC), where her major is Interdisciplinary Studies.
Tyana has volunteered from 2014 to the present at The Toyota Museum, American Legion Jackie Robinson Post #252 in Los Angeles, M.E.N.T.O.R.S, Creating Justice, and The Row Church. Her stage credits include LASC and the Vision Theatre Complex Readers Theatre. She is a five-time winner at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KC-ACTF) for devised work credits, including I am NOT your Property! (The Recy Taylor Story), Criminal (Emmitt Till), and The Threat.
Her web series credits include Simple Ingredients and Hula Gang. Film credits include Hood Rats 2, Mattais, and the upcoming Hitman Heaven.
Lynden Bond – Assistant Professor at the College of Social Work, University of Kentucky
Lynden Bond (she/her), PhD, MSW is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Social Work. She is a community-centered mixed-methods researcher whose research focuses on homelessness, housing insecurity, and behavioral health. Lynden’s extensive direct practice, organizing, and advocacy experiences, including as a clinical supervisor in a homeless outreach program and in a permanent supportive housing program, guide her research and commitment to partnering with directly impacted people in this work. Her current research focuses on examining homelessness responses systems and how people experiencing housing security access and use behavioral health services and systems. Prior to joining the College of Social Work, Lynden was a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. She holds a PhD and an MSW from the Silver School of Social Work at New York University.
Moderators
Saba Mwine-Chang – Deputy Chief Equity Officer, LAHSA
Saba Mwine-Chang (She/Her/Hers) serves as the inaugural Deputy Chief Equity Officer at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) where she provides strategic leadership and facilitates shared vision and collaborative partnerships among LAHSA staff, Los Angeles Continuum of Care, the City of Los Angeles and the County of Los Angeles. Saba’s work at LAHSA includes fostering: culturally specific and informed healing service delivery models; data driven equity goals, metrics and implementation; equity technical assistance and guidance for service providers, staff and the public at large. Prior to LAHSA, Saba served as inaugural Managing Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI), a collaborative of over one hundred researchers, policymakers, service providers and experts with lived experience of homelessness that accelerate equitable and culturally informed solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by advancing knowledge and fostering transformational partnerships between research, policy and practice. Under Saba’s co-direction, HPRI more than doubled in size, growing collaboratively from a start-up to an established trusted racial equity centered institute locally and across the country. Saba helped deepen policy relationships, supported anti-racist research, practice and integrated community learning spaces.
Saba has over twenty years of experience spearheading housing justice work throughout the nation. At the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), she worked to establish their first racial equity initiatives via fundraising, designing grant programming, developing and delivering transformative learnings, and guiding community initiatives. Under the Obama Administration, she facilitated the national Housing Discrimination Study throughout Los Angeles County and other major cities across the country, measuring access to housing based on race and other protected classes. Saba is a classically trained actor and holds a master’s of fine arts in theatre; she is committed to the arts and somatic practice as a tool for healing racial trauma and shaping community spaces. Saba is a proud board member of Housing Works, California and board chair of Arc4Justice and she serves on HPRI’s steering, research and race equity committees. In California and nationally, Saba is a leading voice in the movement for liberatory, community engaged, culturally informed healing approaches to addressing racism—the least examined cause and perpetuator of homelessness.
Suzette Shaw – Advocate
Displaced to Skid Row over a decade ago, Suzette has volunteered with the Downtown Women’s Center in one capacity to another. Whether washing dishes, serving food, sorting and ironing clothes, sitting in the day center having lunch with the other women, advocating for policy changes through the DVHSC, volunteering annually with the Homeless Count through the Homeless Count with DWC, taking a lead role In S.C.A.L.E and Project 100, volunteering with administering, research or sharing my story with the DWAC Needs Assessment for the last decade and now a student in the Watts School of Social Work at Arizona State University in Community Advocacy/ Social Policy with a minor in Organizational Leadership Development, She uses her grassroots efforts to be a voice for change. Her platform is: “We can no longer talk about equality and empowerment while enforcing inequities”…..
Full Event Recording: https://youtu.be/cZ5u7vikxz0
Si quieres usar subtítulos, haz clic en el ícono “CC” en la parte inferior derecha del video. Para cambiar el idioma de los subtítulos, haz clic en el ícono de configuraciones y seleccionar la opción de subtítulos donde puedes cambiar el idioma a Español.’
Highlights: https://youtu.be/V7HNzs5SN88
Resources for this Symposium