Formed in April 2001, the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition (DWAC) consists of service providers, advocates, and downtown residents whose goals are to improve current housing and services for women and increase the resources available for women’s housing and service programs. Subsequently, DWAC initiated the planning, design, and execution of the Downtown Women’s Needs Assessment. The purpose of this needs assessment was not to verify or disprove social theories concerning the causes of homelessness. Similarly, the project’s goal was not to determine root causes or contributing factors to homelessness among the individual survey respondents (though some such information can be inferred from the data). The survey was designed to identify the current needs and characteristics of women living downtown in order to assist the downtown community in designing housing and service programs appropriate for women’s needs and to increase resources for new women’s programs.
