Shelter Partnership

written by Ruth Schwartz, Executive Director

Last week, the Los Angeles Times featured a 4-part series of articles on Project 50.  The articles profiled a few residents who had been placed in Skid Row Housing Trust permanent supportive housing units.  These residents had been selected for permanent supportive housing because the County-sponsored Project 50 deemed them most likely to die on the streets on Skid Row, a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles.

Despite its length, the articles failed to provide context about homelessness in Los Angeles County or the roles played by our local government, including individual cities and the County, to make it possible to end homelessness.  We are attempting to address this lack of context through a series of blog posts.  This blog post will describe the relationship between the County of Los Angeles and the various cities that lie within the massive region that make up the County.

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written by Ruth Schwartz, Executive Director

Many people have asked us what we at Shelter Partnership think about Christopher Goffard’s four-part story on Project 50 that appeared last week in the LA Times.  Given the complexity of homelessness and its solutions, it’s not surprising that Goffard’s series raised many questions.

We think Steve Lopez’s reasoned analysis in Sunday’s LA Times summarizes the principle lessons of Project 50.  Here’s a link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0808-lopezcolumn-20100808,0,5137075.story

written by Dhakshike Wickrema, Senior Project Manager

Last week, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) published the nation’s first Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.  Click here to read the Plan.

The Plan comes on the heels of an unprecedented investment of $1.5 billion nationwide in Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing funds, increased investments in homeless assistance in federal budget requests, the reauthorization of homeless assistance (McKinney-Vento) funding through the HEARTH Act of 2009 and a push to coordinate funding across federal agencies providing services and housing for the homeless.

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written by Dhakshike Wickrema, Project Manager

Last week, 777 participants, representing 47 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and three Canadian provinces, attended the 2010 National Health Care for the Homeless Conference in San Francisco.  Barbara Poppe, Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and Jim O’Connell, President of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, were the Keynote Speakers.  (The speeches are available online at http://www.nhchc.org/2010conference/webcastinfo.html and photos can be found on Shelter Partnership’s Facebook page.)

The conference focused on innovative approaches and offered over 70 different workshops on a variety of policies, programs, research, and advocacy efforts related to health care for the homeless.  Following are summaries of two workshops that stood out.

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Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most recent budget calls for major funding cuts to the safety net for families, and in some cases the total elimination of programs.  Among the programs proposed for elimination is the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) Program, which provides cash assistance to extremely low-income families with children, while helping parents find jobs and overcome barriers to employment.  More than 400,000 individuals would be affected in Los Angeles County alone, and over 75% of them are children.

Families who receive CalWORKs are barely able to secure and retain housing, as the maximum grant for a family of three in Los Angeles County is $694.  This grant has not risen with inflation and is at the same level as in 1990.  The grant for more than half of all of CalWORKs families is actually $561 as the adult member of the household is excluded from aid due to sanctions or eligibility issues.

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written by Dhakshike Wickrema, Project Manager

Under HUD’s current definition of homelessness, which of the following households would be eligible for housing and/or services funded by HUD?

1. A family that spends every night in their station wagon
2. A mother with a chronic disability and her daughter who have no rental housing of their own and have moved four times in the past four months, staying with different family members
3. A Vietnam Veteran who lives in a transitional housing program
4. An individual who lives in his own rental housing unit but will be evicted in two weeks and has no subsequent residence identified or resources to help him find new housing

At the moment, only the households in situations (1) and (3) above are considered homeless by HUD.  However, there are some big changes being proposed by HUD.  If these proposed changes are finalized by HUD, very soon, if you told someone that HUD considered all of the households described above to be homeless, you would be correct!

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written by Steve Renahan, Senior Policy Advisor

The coffee was strong. The optimism stronger.

The attendees at the National Low Income Housing Coalition Conference in Washington, DC last week were there to learn what’s new in federal affordable housing and homeless policy. What they heard from Washington insiders and highly-placed dignitaries is that a buoyant spirit of hope pervades the HUD building, Capitol Hill, and the offices of advocates. (You can view photos from the event on our Facebook page.)

Speaker after starry-eyed speaker, including HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan during his plenary session remarks, described the new HUD “Dream Team” appointed by President Obama.

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written by Ruth Schwartz

There is certainly truth when it comes to the old adage that the “devil is in the details.”  A recent case in point is the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles’ (HACoLA) draft Section 8 Administrative Plan.

The Administrative Plan is a part of the Public Housing Agency (PHA) Plan–a comprehensive guide to policies, programs, operations, and strategies for meeting local housing needs and goals. Among the issues that the PHA must address in the Section 8 Administrative Plan is how they will evaluate households for inclusion in the program that have had any interaction with the criminal justice system.

With approximately 21,000 housing vouchers, HACoLA is the second largest housing authority in the region receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide housing subsidy to eligible low-income households residing in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County and 62 participating cities. http://www.lacdc.org/CDCWebsite/AH/Home.aspx

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written by Dhakshike Wickrema, Project Manager

In February 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed into law.  Also known as ARRA but more popularly referred to as the “Stimulus Bill,” the new law provides funds for communities, including the City of LA, to carry out a new initiative called the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program (HPRP).

HPRP provides communities with funds to help families and individuals who are residents of the City of LA and:

1) Have an annual income that is 50% of the “Area Median Income”

[see fact sheet below for City of LA income limits]

2) Are homeless OR about to lose their rental housing and become homeless

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written by Steve Renahan, Senior Policy Advisor

Jon worked as a successful general contractor in northern California, but after being diagnosed with a chronic illness 10 years ago at age 60, he was forced to retire.  Soon thereafter, Jon went through a difficult divorce.  He moved to Los Angeles with hopes of making a living in the real estate market.  When that venture did not pan out Jon went through a downward spiral of events moving from a house to a boarding house to a motor home to a van to a motel and eventually to the streets of Venice and Santa Monica.

Meanwhile, there are over 10,000 units of below-market affordable housing for older adults in Los Angeles County, including many where tenants pay just 30% of their income in rent.

Why wasn’t Jon living in one of those buildings instead of on the street?

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